Variables that will be included when performing the required
tasks. Can be either
a variable specified as a literal variable name (e.g., column_name),
a string with the variable name (e.g., "column_name"), or a character
vector of variable names (e.g., c("col1", "col2", "col3")),
a formula with variable names (e.g., ~column_1 + column_2),
a vector of positive integers, giving the positions counting from the left
(e.g. 1 or c(1, 3, 5)),
a vector of negative integers, giving the positions counting from the
right (e.g., -1 or -1:-3),
one of the following select-helpers: starts_with(), ends_with(),
contains(), a range using : or regex(""). starts_with(),
ends_with(), and contains() accept several patterns, e.g
starts_with("Sep", "Petal").
or a function testing for logical conditions, e.g. is.numeric() (or
is.numeric), or any user-defined function that selects the variables
for which the function returns TRUE (like: foo <- function(x) mean(x) > 3),
ranges specified via literal variable names, select-helpers (except
regex()) and (user-defined) functions can be negated, i.e. return
non-matching elements, when prefixed with a -, e.g. -ends_with(""),
-is.numeric or -Sepal.Width:Petal.Length. Note: Negation means
that matches are excluded, and thus, the exclude argument can be
used alternatively. For instance, select=-ends_with("Length") (with
-) is equivalent to exclude=ends_with("Length") (no -). In case
negation should not work as expected, use the exclude argument instead.