Use of tidyeval based non-standard evaluation in recode in right-hand side of mutate

You can use the "curly curly" method now if you have rlang >= 0.4.0.

Explanation thanks to @eipi10:

This combines the two step process of quote-then-unquote into one step, so {{question}} is equivalent to !!enquo(question)

fix_question <- function(df, question){
  df %>% mutate({{question}} := recode({{question}}, A = NA_character_))
}

fix_question(sample_df, q1)
# # A tibble: 3 x 2
#   q1    q2   
#   <chr> <chr>
# 1 NA    B    
# 2 B     B    
# 3 C     A    

Note that unlike the ensym approach, this doesn't work with character names. Even worse, it does the wrong thing instead of just giving an error.

fix_question(sample_df, 'q1')

# # A tibble: 3 x 2
#   q1    q2   
#   <chr> <chr>
# 1 q1    B    
# 2 q1    B    
# 3 q1    A    

You can make the function a bit more flexible by allowing a vector of recoded values to be entered as an argument as well. For example:

library(tidyverse)
sample_df <- tibble(q1 = c("A", "B", "C"), q2 = c("B", "B", "A"))

fix_question <- function(df, question, recode.vec) {

  df %>% mutate({{question}} := recode({{question}}, !!!recode.vec))

}

fix_question(sample_df, q1, c(A=NA_character_, B="Was B"))

  q1    q2   
1 <NA>  B    
2 Was B B    
3 C     A

Note that recode.vec is "unquote-spliced" with !!!. You can see what this is doing with this example, adapted from the Programming with dplyr vignette (search for "splice" to see the relevant examples). Note how !!! "splices" the pairs of recoding values into the recode function so that they are used as the ... argument in recode.

x = c("A", "B", "C")
args = c(A=NA_character_, B="Was B")

quo(recode(x, !!!args))

<quosure>
expr: ^recode(x, A = <chr: NA>, B = "Was B")
env:  global

If you want to potentially run the recoding function on multiple columns, you can turn it into a function that takes just a column name and a recoding vector. This approach seems like it would be more pipe-friendly.

fix_question <- function(question, recode.vec) {

  recode({{question}}, !!!recode.vec)

}

sample_df %>% 
  mutate_at(vars(matches("q")), list(~fix_question(., c(A=NA_character_, B="Was B"))))

  q1    q2   
1 <NA>  Was B
2 Was B Was B
3 C     <NA>

Or to recode a single column:

sample_df %>% 
  mutate(q1 = fix_question(q1, c(A=NA_character_, B="Was B")))

Here, on the right side of :=, we can specify sym to convert to symbol and then evaluate (!!)

fix_question <- function(df, question) {
    df %>%
       mutate(!!question := recode(!! rlang::sym(question), "A" = NA_character_))
  }

fix_question(sample_df, "q1") 
# A tibble: 3 x 2
#  q1    q2   
#  <chr> <chr>
#1 <NA>  B    
#2 B     B    
#3 C     A    

---

A better approach that would work for both quoted and unquoted input is ensym

fix_question <- function(df, question) {
    question <- ensym(question)
    df %>%
       mutate(!!question := recode(!! question, "A" = NA_character_))
  }


fix_question(sample_df, q1)
# A tibble: 3 x 2
#  q1    q2   
#  <chr> <chr>
#1 <NA>  B    
#2 B     B    
#3 C     A    

fix_question(sample_df, "q1")
# A tibble: 3 x 2
#  q1    q2   
#  <chr> <chr>
#1 <NA>  B    
#2 B     B    
#3 C     A