dplyr::select one column and output as vector [duplicate]

Question

dplyr::select results in a data.frame, is there a way to make it return a vector if the result is one column?

Currently, I have to do extra step (res <- res$y) to convert it to vector from data.frame, see this example:

#dummy data df <- data.frame(x = 1:10, y = LETTERS[1:10], stringsAsFactors = FALSE)  #dplyr filter and select results in data.frame res <- df %>% filter(x > 5) %>% select(y) class(res) #[1] "data.frame"  #desired result is a character vector res <- res$y class(res) #[1] "character" 

Something as below:

res <- df %>% filter(x > 5) %>% select(y) %>% as.character res # This gives strange output [1] "c(\"F\", \"G\", \"H\", \"I\", \"J\")"  # I need: # [1] "F" "G" "H" "I" "J" 

Answer 1

The best way to do it (IMO):

library(dplyr) df <- data_frame(x = 1:10, y = LETTERS[1:10])  df %>%    filter(x > 5) %>%    .$y 

---

In dplyr 0.7.0, you can now use pull():

df %>% filter(x > 5) %>% pull(y) 

Answer 2

Something like this?

> res <- df %>% filter(x>5) %>% select(y) %>% sapply(as.character) %>% as.vector > res [1] "F" "G" "H" "I" "J" > class(res) [1] "character"