Problems in creating function in R

Question

I am new to R and I am trying to create simple UDFs in R. Every time I try to create one, I get the error "

Error: unexpected symbol in:".

Not sure where I am going wrong. Here are a few examples of the functions that I was creating

Function 1

addPercent <- function(x) {
   percent <- round (x *100, digits  = 1) result<- paste(percent, "%", sep="") return(result)
}

Function 2

avg<- function(x) { s <- sum(x) n <- length(x) s/n }

Would really appreciate any kind of help to solve this minor issue. Thank you much in advance

I'm not sure whether this is a formatting issue here on SO or if this is your actual issue; either use ; to separate multiple commands or use new lines. So avg should read avg <- function(x) { s <- sum(x); n <- length(x); s/n } — Maurits Evers
– Maurits Evers, Commented Mar 12, 2019 at 5:13

Maurits Evers · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-12 05:16:47Z

2

To expand from my comment:

In R you have to separate statements either with ; (semicolon) or with a newline.

So this works:

avg <- function(x) { s <- sum(x); n <- length(x); s/n }
avg(c(1, 2, 3))
#[1] 2

As does this

avg <- function(x) { 
    s <- sum(x)
    n <- length(x)
    s/n 
}
avg(c(1, 2, 3))
#[1] 2

To pre-empt the question "What's the difference?", see the following post: What's the difference in using a semicolon or explicit new line in R code .

answered Mar 12, 2019 at 5:16

Maurits Evers

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