R: How to use a global variable that clashes with column name a dplyr workflow?

Question

y = 1

library(dplyr)

data.frame(x = 1, y = 2) %>%
  mutate(xy = x+y)

In the above example, xy will equal 3, but I want to use the global variable y to compute xy. How can I do that with dplyr?

Answer 1

We can use (!!)

library(dplyr)
data.frame(x = 1, y = 2) %>%
     mutate(xy = x+ !!y)

-output

#  x y xy
#1 1 2  2

---

Or extract directly from the .GlobalEnv

data.frame(x = 1, y = 2) %>%
  mutate(xy = x+ .GlobalEnv$y)

-output

#  x y xy
#1 1 2  2