Error Handling in R
October 9th, 2012
2 comments
It’s often the case that I want to write an R script that loops over multiple datasets, or different subsets of a large dataset, running the same procedure over them: generating plots, or fitting a model, perhaps. I set the script running and turn to another task, only to come back later and find the loop has crashed partway through, on an unanticipated error. Here’s a toy example:
> inputs = list(1, 2, 4, -5, 'oops', 0, 10)
> for(input in inputs) {
+ print(paste("log of", input, "=", log(input)))
+ }
[1] "log of 1 = 0"
[1] "log of 2 = 0.693147180559945"
[1] "log of 4 = 1.38629436111989"
[1] "log of -5 = NaN"
Error in log(input) : Non-numeric argument to mathematical function
In addition: Warning message:
In log(input) : NaNs produced
The loop handled the negative arguments more or less gracefully (depending on how you feel about NaN), but crashed on the non-numeric argument, and didn’t finish the list of inputs.
How are we going to handle this?
Categories: Coding, Pragmatic Machine Learning, Programming, Statistics, Tutorials error handling, exception handling in R, R
