The unexpected symbol in r error message occurs in r programming when a function receives unexpected input. This unexpected input is normally the result of a syntax error resulting from careless typing. The way to fix this problem is to fix any syntactic errors in your code. While this results from a common mistake, there are many things you can do to cause it, making it tricky to diagnose and fix.
Description of the R error
The unexpected symbol error usually results from syntactic errors in your code, such as forgetting a closing bracket, forgetting to include commas, and many other typographical mistakes. It can occur when creating or processing an object, but it is not a problem with a variable name or its values. This error Is easy to cause but tricky to diagnose and fix because there are many ways that you can accidentally cause it even within the same function. The good news is, that once you find the source of the problem, it is typically easy to figure out how to fix it. The tricky part is finding out exactly what needs to be fixed.
Explanation of the error
Here are seven examples of r code that produce our error message. Most of them are simple syntax errors that are easy to catch as you are writing the code.
> x = c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
> 2 x
Error: unexpected symbol in “2 x”
In this example, the operator symbol was omitted in the second line. As a result, it produces our message.
> x = 4
> if x > 1 {x^2}
Error: unexpected symbol in “if x”
In this example, the parentheses are omitted in the if statement. As a result, it produces our message.
> c(2 5)
Error: unexpected numeric constant in “c(2 5”
In this example, the comma was omitted in the first line. As a result, it produces our message.
> x = 4
> if (x = 4) {x^2}
Error: unexpected ‘=’ in “if (x =”
In this example, the second equal sign was omitted from the if statement. As a result, it produces our message.
> df = data.frame(“x y” = 1:5)
> df$x y
Error: unexpected symbol in “df$x y”
In this example, the column name has an unusual format that causes it to produce our message.
> data.frame(x = c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
+ y = c(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9))
Error: unexpected symbol in:
“data frame(x = c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
y”
In this example, a comma has been omitted in creating this data frame. As a result, it produces our message.
> df = data.frame(x = c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8),
+ y = c(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)
+ df
Error: unexpected symbol in:
” y = c(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)
df”
In this example, the ending parenthesis has been omitted in creating this data frame. As a result, it produces our message.
How to fix the R error
Here are seven examples of code that fixes our error message as produced in the previous section.
> x = c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
> 2*x
[1] 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
In this example, we added a multiplication sign to fix the problem. It could have been other signs as well.
> x = 4
> if (x > 1) {x^2}
[1] 16
In this example, we added parentheses to fix the problem.
> c(2, 5)
[1] 2 5
In this example, we are in a comma to fix the problem.
> x = 4
> if (x == 4) {x^2}
[1] 16
In this example, we added a second equal sign to fix the problem by creating a proper logical statement.
> df = data.frame(“x_y” = 1:5)
> df$x_y
[1] 1 2 3 4 5
In this example, we added an underscore to fix the problem by eliminating the space. Another solution is placing x y in single quotes after the dollar sign.
> data.frame(x = c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8),
+ y = c(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9))
In this example, we added a comma at the end of the first line to fix the problem.
> df = data.frame(x = c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8),
+ y = c(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9))
> df
In this example, we added the ending parenthesis to fix the problem.
This error message results from the common mistake of making syntactic errors. This is an easy error to make because there are several ways that it can be produced. However, once you figure out the cause, fixing the problem is quite easy, the challenge is in finding the cause.