How to replace NA values in a table for selected columns

You can do:

x[, 1:2][is.na(x[, 1:2])] <- 0

or better (IMHO), use the variable names:

x[c("a", "b")][is.na(x[c("a", "b")])] <- 0

In both cases, 1:2 or c("a", "b") can be replaced by a pre-defined vector.

Building on @Robert McDonald's tidyr::replace_na() answer, here are some dplyr options for controlling which columns the NAs are replaced:

library(tidyverse)

# by column type:
x %>%
  mutate_if(is.numeric, ~replace_na(., 0))

# select columns defined in vars(col1, col2, ...):
x %>%
  mutate_at(vars(a, b, c), ~replace_na(., 0))

# all columns:
x %>%
  mutate_all(~replace_na(., 0))