How to use dplyr programming syntax to create and evaluate variable names

Question

I would like to dynamically input a variable name using dplyr programming syntax, however, as many have described this can be quite confusing.

I\'ve played around wi

Answer 1

We can use sym from rlang to convert the string to symbol and then evaluate (!!)

library(dplyr)
df %>%
   mutate(color3 = !!(rlang::sym(paste0("color", num))))
# A tibble: 5 x 4
#  color1 color2 value color3
#  <chr>  <chr>  <int> <chr> 
#1 blue   black      1 black 
#2 blue   black      2 black 
#3 blue   black      3 black 
#4 blue   black      4 black 
#5 blue   black      5 black