Argument 1 is not a Vector

[bjs1206]

Hi, I am new to R. I have been trying to run the listFromLong command to transform a data frame from long format to list. I am sure that my data is in long format, however whenever I run the code I run into the following error "Error in order(rownames(res[[i]])) : argument 1 is not a vector"

After looking at the lisFromLong's source code I realized that the error must be somewhere along the lines between ** ** in this code:

listFromLong <- function(foo, unit.variable, time.variable, 
                         unit.names.variable=NULL,exclude.columns=NULL) {
  if(!is.data.frame(foo)) stop("foo must be a data.frame")

  # main helper function
  DFtoList <- function(input,rowcol,colcol,colnamecol=NULL,exclude=NULL) {
    stopifnot(length(dim(input))==2)
    datcols    <- setdiff(seq_len(ncol(input)), 
                          c(rowcol,colcol,colnamecol,exclude))
    *res        <- vector("list",length(datcols))*
    names(res) <- if (!is.null(colnames(input))) colnames(input)[datcols] else 
                                                 as.character(datcols)
    if (!is.null(colnamecol)) {
      c2n        <- na.omit(unique(input[,colnamecol]))
      names(c2n) <- na.omit(unique(input[,colcol]))
    }  
    for (i in seq_along(res)) {
      idx  <- !is.na(input[,datcols[i]])
      rown <- unique(input[idx,rowcol])
      coln <- unique(input[idx,colcol])
      res[[i]] <- matrix(NA,nrow=length(rown),ncol=length(coln))
      rownames(res[[i]]) <- rown
      colnames(res[[i]]) <- coln
      for (j in which(idx)) 
        res[[i]][as.character(input[j,rowcol]),as.character(input[j,colcol])] <- 
          input[j,datcols[i]]
      **if (!is.null(colnamecol)) colnames(res[[i]]) <- c2n[as.character(coln)]**
**      res[[i]] <- res[[i]][order(rownames(res[[i]])),,drop=FALSE]**
    }
    res
  }

My inexperience with R prevents me from pinpointing the exact source of the error as, to my understanding, the data is ready to be processed by this code. In other words, I would appreciate it if someone could tell me how to locate Argument 1, or give me an explanation as to why it was not converted to a vector in the line between * *.

My data was imported from Stata using

data <- read.dta13("path/data.dta") 

[williaml]

What does your data look like? Can you provide a reproducible example?

FAQ: How to do a minimal reproducible example ( reprex ) for beginners

A minimal reproducible example consists of the following items: A minimal dataset, necessary to reproduce the issue The minimal runnable code necessary to reproduce the issue, which can be run on the given dataset, and including the necessary information on the used packages. Let's quickly go over each one of these with examples: Minimal Dataset (Sample Data) You need to provide a data frame that is small enough to be (reasonably) pasted on a post, but big enough to reproduce your issue. Let's say, as an example, that you are working with the iris data frame head(iris) #> Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species #> 1 5.1 3.5 1.4 0.…

[bjs1206]

While creating the data frame I realized that the code worked correctly for a subset of the data. I realized that when excluding those observations with a vector of uniquely missing values in important variables the code ran properly. Perhaps the problem was rotted in the fact the some empty vectors were being created. Is that feasible?