Renaming columns after reshape in R -

i used line of code transpose dataset:

b2<-reshape(b1,timevar="species",idvar="pointid",direction="wide") 

and ended this:

point final$count.tot.spec1 final$count.tot.spec2 ... final$count.tot.spec99   1          1                       2            ...             0   2          3                       0            ...             0 

i want rename columns after "point" removing "final$count.tot." names, have:

point spec1 spec2 ... spec99    1    1     2   ...   0    2    3     0   ...   0 

i have tried using this:

names(b2)<-gsub("final$count.tot.","",names(b2)) 

but gets hung on non-characters. i've searched stack overflow have not found solution works case. appreciated.

$ special character in regular expressions (determines line ending, see ?regexp). have use \\$ or set fixed=true (see ?gsub):

x <- c("point", "final$count.tot.spec1", "final$count.tot.spec2") gsub("final$count.tot.", "", x=x, fixed=true) # [1] "point" "spec1" "spec2"