title: R: rename subset of variables in data frame
body: <p>I'm renaming the majority of the variables in a data frame and I'm not really impressed with my method.</p>
  
  <p>Therefore, does anyone on SO have a smarter or faster way then the one presented below using only base?</p>
  
  <pre><code>    data(mtcars)
    # head(mtcars)
  
  
    temp.mtcars &lt;- mtcars
    names(temp.mtcars) &lt;- c((x &lt;- c("mpg", "cyl", "disp")), 
                             gsub('^', "baR.", setdiff(names (mtcars),x)))
    str(temp.mtcars)
    'data.frame': 32 obs. of  11 variables:
     $ mpg     : num  21 21 22.8 21.4 18.7 18.1 14.3 24.4 22.8 19.2 ...
     $ cyl     : num  6 6 4 6 8 6 8 4 4 6 ...
     $ disp    : num  160 160 108 258 360 ...
     $ baR.hp  : num  110 110 93 110 175 105 245 62 95 123 ...
     $ baR.drat: num  3.9 3.9 3.85 3.08 3.15 2.76 3.21 3.69 3.92 3.92 ...
     $ baR.wt  : num  2.62 2.88 2.32 3.21 3.44 ...
     $ baR.qsec: num  16.5 17 18.6 19.4 17 ...
     $ baR.vs  : num  0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 ...
     $ baR.am  : num  1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
     $ baR.gear: num  4 4 4 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 ...
     $ baR.carb: num  4 4 1 1 2 1 4 2 2 4 ...
  </code></pre>