Select column of dataframe with name matching a string in Julia?

Question

I have a large DataFrame that I import from a spreadsheet. I have the names of several columns that I care about in an array of strings. How do I select a column of the DataFrame who's name matches the contents of a string? I would have though that something like this would work

using DataFrames
df = DataFrame(A = 1:4, B = ["M", "F", "F", "M"], C = 2:5)
colsICareAbout = [":B" ":C"]
df[:A] #This works
df[colsICareAbout[1]] #This doesn't work

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

Strings are different than symbols, but they're easy to convert.

colsICareAbout = ["B","C"]
df[symbol(colsICareAbout[1])]

Mind you it might be better to make the entries in colsICareAbout symbols to begin with, but I don't know where your data is coming from.