add complex variable names to a data.frame

dataframe_vars.R

df = data.frame(id = 1:10, fname = paste0("name", 1:10))

nms = c(id = "the unique id which does this or that",
        fname = "first name of a person")

attr(df, 'info') <- nms

## let is see how this looks
attr(df, "info")

## show a pretty table
library(knitr) # OR library(params)
kable(df, col.names = attr(df, "info"))

| the unique id which does this or that|first name of a person |
|-------------------------------------:|:----------------------|
|                                     1|name1                  |
|                                     2|name2                  |
|                                     3|name3                  |
|                                     4|name4                  |
|                                     5|name5                  |
|                                     6|name6                  |
|                                     7|name7                  |
|                                     8|name8                  |
|                                     9|name9                  |
|                                    10|name10                 |