Create column names with spaces

Question

I’m trying to create a DF with columns that contain spaces in their names, but an error is appearing. This is the DF I’m trying to create:

MUNICIPIO <- c('BELO HORIZONTE','BRASILIA','JUIZ DE FORA','MANAUS','MONTES CLAROS','RECIFE','RIO DE JANEIRO','SALVADOR','SAO PAULO','UBERLANDIA')
BELO HORIZONTE <- c(0,700,250,1000,400,800,430,900,500,30)

This is error message:

Error: unexpected symbol in "BELO HORIZONTE"

How do I solve this example of my problem? The DF I am working on has several columns like this example, so I would like a solution suggestion that could cover several columns

Answer 1

One way to solve this is to write the variable name between bass accents:

MUNICIPIO <- c('BELO HORIZONTE', 'BRASILIA', 'JUIZ DE FORA', 'MANAUS', 
               'MONTES CLAROS', 'RECIFE', 'RIO DE JANEIRO', 'SALVADOR', 
               'SAO PAULO', 'UBERLANDIA')
`BELO HORIZONTE` <- c(0, 700, 250, 1000, 400, 800, 430, 900, 500, 30)
BRASILIA <- c(700, 0, 350, 1200, 50, 110, 780, 984, 1150, 5)
`JUIZ DE FORA` <- c(250, 350, 0, 200, 15, 260, 305, 412, 29, 102)
MANAUS <- c(1000, 1200, 200, 0, 77, 115, 225, 318, 412, 511)
`MONTES CLAROS` <- c(400, 50, 15, 77, 0, 88, 819, 733, 978, 1001)
RECIFE <- c(800, 110, 260, 115, 88, 0, 17, 3000, 1418, 735)
`RIO DE JANEIRO` <- c(430, 780, 305, 225, 819, 17, 0, 513, 701, 56)
SALVADOR <- c(900, 984, 412, 318, 733, 3000, 513, 0, 389, 499)
`SAO PAULO` <- c(500, 1150, 29, 412, 978, 1418, 701, 389, 0, 1113)
UBERLANDIA <- c(30, 5, 102, 511, 1001, 735, 56, 499, 1113, 0)
DADOS_2 <- data.frame(MUNICIPIO, `BELO HORIZONTE`, BRASILIA, `JUIZ DE FORA`,
                      MANAUS, `MONTES CLAROS`, RECIFE, `RIO DE JANEIRO`, 
                      SALVADOR, `SAO PAULO`, UBERLANDIA)

I don’t know exactly why I’m doing this, because R will lose space information if a data frame is created with these vectors:

names(DADOS_2)
 [1] "MUNICIPIO"      "BELO.HORIZONTE" "BRASILIA"       "JUIZ.DE.FORA"   "MANAUS"        
 [6] "MONTES.CLAROS"  "RECIFE"         "RIO.DE.JANEIRO" "SALVADOR"       "SAO.PAULO"     
[11] "UBERLANDIA"

If the goal is to use these names of cities with space for some presentation of results, I recommend keeping them all without space in the names of the columns and in the objects within Workspace. Let to manually set these names only in the actual presentation, as for example in the Abels of possible graphics.