You can use the following methods to drop columns from a data frame in R whose name contains specific strings:

Method 1: Drop Columns if Name Contains Specific String

library(dplyr)

df_new <- df %>% select(-contains('this_string'))

Method 2: Drop Columns if Name Contains One of Several Specific Strings

library(dplyr)

df_new <- df %>% select(-contains(c('string1', 'string2', 'string3')))

The following examples show how to use each method in practice with the following data frame in R:

#create data frame
df <- data.frame(team_name=c('A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F'),
                 team_location=c('AU', 'AU', 'EU', 'EU', 'AU', 'EU'),
                 player_name=c('Andy', 'Bob', 'Chad', 'Dan', 'Ed', 'Fran'),
                 points=c(22, 29, 35, 30, 18, 12))

#view data frame
df

  team_name team_location player_name points
1         A            AU        Andy     22
2         B            AU         Bob     29
3         C            EU        Chad     35
4         D            EU         Dan     30
5         E            AU          Ed     18
6         F            EU        Fran     12

Example 1: Drop Columns if Name Contains Specific String

We can use the following syntax to drop all columns in the data frame that contain ‘team’ anywhere in the column name:

library(dplyr)

#drop columns that contain 'team'
df_new <- df %>% select(-contains('team'))

#view new data frame
df_new

  player_name points
1        Andy     22
2         Bob     29
3        Chad     35
4         Dan     30
5          Ed     18
6        Fran     12

Notice that both columns that contained ‘team’ in the name have been dropped from the data frame. 

Example 2: Drop Columns if Name Contains One of Several Specific Strings

We can use the following syntax to drop all columns in the data frame that contain ‘player’ or ‘points’ anywhere in the column name:

#drop columns whose name contains 'player' or 'points'
df_new <- df %>% select(-contains(c('player', 'points')))

#view new data frame
df

  team_name team_location
1         A            AU
2         B            AU
3         C            EU
4         D            EU
5         E            AU
6         F            EU

Notice that both columns that contained either ‘player’ or ‘points’ in the name have been dropped from the data frame.

Note: You can find the complete documentation for the dplyr select() function .