title: R read.csv Importing Column Names Incorrectly
body: <p>I have a csv that I would like to import into R as a data.frame. This csv has headers such as <code>USD.ZeroCouponBondPrice(1m)</code> and <code>USD-EQ-SP500</code> that I can't change. When I try to import it into R, however, R's <code>read.csv</code> function overwrites the characters <code>()-</code> as <code>.</code> Although I wasn't able to find a way to fix this in the function <a href="http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/utils/html/read.table.html" rel="noreferrer">documentation</a>, this line of code worked:</p>
  
  <pre><code>colnames(df)&lt;-c('USD.ZeroCouponBondPrice(1m)', 'USD-EQ-SP500')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>so those characters are legal in <code>data.frame</code> column names. Overwriting all of the column names is annoying and fragile as there are over 20 of them and it is not unthinkable for them to change. Is there a way to prevent <code>read.csv</code> from replacing those characters, or an alternative function to use?</p>