Use left_join() by and suffix args instead of renaming columns manually.

[Aariq]

NEON-Data-Skills/tutorials/R/biodiversity/neon-phenology-temp/01-explore-phenology-data/01-explore-phenology-data.R

Lines 113 to 121 in e59c9c2

	# in Status table rename like columns
	status_noD <- rename(status_noD, dateStat=date,
	editedDateStat=editedDate, measuredByStat=measuredBy,
	recordedByStat=recordedBy,
	samplingProtocolVersionStat=samplingProtocolVersion,
	remarksStat=remarks, dataQFStat=dataQF,
	publicationDateStat=publicationDate)

Instead of renaming columns manually before left_join()ing, you can do something like this:

left_join(
  status_noD,
  ind_noD,
  by = c(
    "namedLocation",
    "domainID",
    "siteID",
    "plotID",
    "individualID",
    "release"
  ),
  suffix = c("Stat", "")
)

This will add the suffix "Stat" to any duplicate column names not in the vector supplied to by

[cklunch]

@Aariq Thanks for the suggestion! For tutorials, it often makes sense to do tasks separately even if it's possible to combine them, so the process and the steps are clearer to the student. I'll leave it up to @kjones13 whether to make this change.

[Aariq]

Yeah, I totally get that. I just felt to me like it would make more sense to explain that you want to join by certain columns rather than that you want to avoid certain columns when joining.

[kjones13]

Hi @Aariq, this is very clean code, and I really I appreciate the suggestion. In this instance, the intent in this step was to be explicit about acknowledging the fieldnames the two data frames have in common and intentionally renaming the fields before joining, as part of the data exploration step.