Making good column names R

Question

I read a table from Microsoft Access using RODBC. Some of the variables had a name with a space in it.

R has no problem with it but I do. I cannot find out how to specify the space

names(alltime) [1] "ID" "LVL7" "Ref Pv No" "Ref Pv Name" "DOS" "Pt Last Name" "Pt First Name" "MRN" "CPT" "CPT Desc" "DxCd1" "DxCd2" "DxCd3" "DxCd4"
[15] "DOE"

But what do I do if I want to do something such as this

alltime[grep("MIDDLE EAR EXPLORE",alltime$CPT Desc,] Error: unexpected symbol in "alltime[grep("MIDDLE EAR EXPLORE",alltime$CPT Desc"

Answer 1

You can quote the column name, e.g.

alltime$'CPT Desc'

Answer 2

Also see make.names