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Find Variables by Name or Label

Source: R/find_var.R
find_var.Rd

Searches for variables in your data by matching a pattern against variable names, variable labels, or both. This is especially useful for SPSS datasets where variable names are often cryptic codes (e.g., v104, q23a_1) and the actual meaning is stored in variable labels.

Usage

find_var(
  data,
  pattern,
  search = c("name_label", "name", "label"),
  fixed = FALSE
)

Arguments

data

A data frame (typically imported from SPSS with read_spss).

pattern

A search term or regular expression to match against variable names and/or labels. Case-insensitive by default.

Where to search: "name_label" (default) searches both variable names and labels, "name" searches only names, "label" searches only labels.

fixed

If TRUE, pattern is searched as literal text (case-insensitive), e.g. find_var(data, "BEFRAGTE(R)", fixed = TRUE) for label text with parentheses. Default FALSE: regular expression. A pattern that is not a valid regular expression (e.g. "(") is searched as literal text automatically, and a message points to fixed = TRUE when the literal text would give other matches.

Value

A data frame with columns:

col

Column position in the data

name

Variable name

label

Variable label (or "" if none)

Without matches, an empty data frame is returned invisibly (with a message).

Details

When to Use This

  • You imported an SPSS file and need to find which variable contains "trust" or "satisfaction"

  • You want to quickly identify all variables related to a topic

  • You know the German/English label text but not the variable code

Pattern Matching

The pattern argument supports regular expressions. Matching is case-insensitive. Some examples:

  • "trust" — matches "trust", "Trust", "distrust", "trustworthy"

  • "^trust" — matches only names/labels starting with "trust"

  • "^q[0-9]+" — matches variable names like q1, q23, q104

  • "zufried" — finds German labels containing "Zufriedenheit"

Label text often contains characters with a special meaning in regular expressions, such as parentheses: "BEFRAGTE(R)" as a regular expression matches "BEFRAGTER". Use fixed = TRUE to search for the text exactly as written.

See also

var_label() for getting/setting variable labels, val_labels() for value labels

Other labels: copy_labels(), drop_labels(), set_na(), to_character(), to_label(), to_labelled(), to_numeric(), unlabel(), val_labels(), var_label()

Examples

library(dplyr)
data(survey_data)

# Find all variables related to "trust"
find_var(survey_data, "trust")
#>   col             name                                    label
#> 1  11 trust_government Trust in government (1=none, 5=complete)
#> 2  12      trust_media      Trust in media (1=none, 5=complete)
#> 3  13    trust_science    Trust in science (1=none, 5=complete)

# Search only in variable labels
find_var(survey_data, "satisfaction", search = "label")
#>   col              name                                           label
#> 1  10 life_satisfaction Life satisfaction (1=dissatisfied, 5=satisfied)

# Use regex to find numbered items
find_var(survey_data, "^q[0-9]+", search = "name")
#> No variables found matching "^q[0-9]+".

# Literal text with regex characters, e.g. parentheses in a label
find_var(survey_data, "(1=left", fixed = TRUE)
#>   col                  name                                   label
#> 1   8 political_orientation Political orientation (1=left, 5=right)