Making good column names R

Question

I read a table from Microsoft Access using RODBC. Some of the variables had a name with a space in it.

R has no problem with it but I do. I cannot find out how to specify the space

names(alltime)
 [1] "ID"            "LVL7"          "Ref Pv No"     "Ref Pv Name"   "DOS"           "Pt Last Name"  "Pt First Name" "MRN"           "CPT"           "CPT Desc"      "DxCd1"         "DxCd2"         "DxCd3"         "DxCd4"        
[15] "DOE"    

But what do I do if I want to do something such as this

> alltime[grep("MIDDLE EAR EXPLORE",alltime$CPT Desc,]
Error: unexpected symbol in "alltime[grep("MIDDLE EAR EXPLORE",alltime$CPT Desc"

Answer 1

Also see make.names

Answer 2

You can quote the column name, e.g.

alltime$'CPT Desc'