I expect that trying to relocate a non-existing column with any_of would return the original dataframe. Even if the dataframe is empty. The function select seems to work more consistently with any_of.

My dplyr version is 1.0.7.

library(tidyverse)
tibble(a=1:2) %>% relocate(any_of("b"))
#> # A tibble: 2 × 1
#>       a
#>   <int>
#> 1     1
#> 2     2
tibble() %>% relocate(any_of("b"))
#> Error: Can't subset columns that don't exist.
#> x Location 1 doesn't exist.
#> ℹ There are only 0 columns.
tibble() %>% select(any_of("b"))
#> # A tibble: 0 × 0

^{Created on 2022-01-28 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}