When there is an error that you don’t understand, you are almost certainly making an assumption that is not true.
Check your assumptions.
Reacting to an error
When you get an error or a warning that you don’t understand, performing the following steps may help you:
- Don’t panic.
- Guess why it is happening.
- Check if your guess is correct.
- Repeat steps 1 through 3 as necessary.
The art of debugging is in the generation of the guesses and the proficiency of the checking. You get better with practice.
The state of R error messages
It has been observed that many error and warning messages in R omit important details. I’ll raise my hand to that and plead guilty. But I am trying to rehabilitate myself.
Resources
Circle 8 is a catalogue of possible errors, and begins with a brief introduction to debugging in R.
This has a chapter on how to debug and other advice on programming trouble.
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