Function to make a consistent set of names for a dataframe: lower case, syntactically correct, not too many dots

Fix_names.R

# x is a dataframe
Fix_names <- function(x){
  my.names <- make.names(names(x))
  my.names <- str_to_lower(my.names) 
  
  # change multiple consecutive dots to one dot, delete leading and trailing dots  
  
  my.names <- str_replace_all(my.names, c("[.]+" = "\\.", "[.]$" = "", "^[.]" = "")) 
  names(x) <- my.names
  x
}