FAQ and Troubleshooting Guide: Common Issues
The downside to R is that it doesn’t communicate well when expressing why you got an error--
only that you got an Error.
There can be multiple options for solving one error and the single solution that eventually
applies to that one problem can also apply to several other problems.
When you get an error, follow this checklist before escalating the issue to the forums or via
Google.
Help! My command isn’t working!
Did you spell the command wrong?
Did you use the wrong case?
help(), Help(), and HELP() are three different functions (and only the first one will work)
Did you forget to use quotation marks when they are needed?
install.packages(“gclus”) will work, while install.packages(gclus) will generate an error.
Did you forget to include the parentheses in a function call?
help() rather than help. Even if there are no options, you still need the().
Did you use the \ in a path name on Windows?
R sees the backlash character as an escape character.
setwd("c:\mydata") will generate an error. Use setwd("c:/mydata") or
setwd("c:\\mydata")instead
Did you call a function from a package that is not yet loaded?
The function str_trim() is contained in the stringr package.
If you try to use it before loading the package, you will get an error
I think my package isn’t loading correctly. I’m getting warnings or errors.
Sometimes, packages depend on other packages to work correctly
