difference_right_join (and probably others) do not create the designated distance_col when there are no overlapping rows. This makes use of these functions in a general pipeline problematic because the column you expect to exist does not. Example below
library(fuzzyjoin)
a <- data.frame(replicate(2,sample(20:30,10,rep=TRUE)))
b <- data.frame(replicate(2,sample(1:10,10,rep=TRUE)))
difference_right_join( a, b, by='X1', max_dist = 1, distance_col='distance')
#> X1.x X2.x X1.y X2.y
#> 1 NA NA 10 4
#> 2 NA NA 7 5
#> 3 NA NA 9 2
#> 4 NA NA 1 10
#> 5 NA NA 8 4
#> 6 NA NA 5 1
#> 7 NA NA 4 9
#> 8 NA NA 1 3
#> 9 NA NA 9 5
#> 10 NA NA 3 6
Created on 2019-08-05 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)