Error: Warning: Error in rep: invalid 'times' argument

General
1

Hi,
I have been using knitr::kable to produce a table from a matrix. The code:

 m.OutTab <- as.matrix(m.OutTab)
  m.OutTab <- gsub("NA%","",m.OutTab)
  #Additional Suppressions
  m.OutTab <- gsub("NaN%","",m.OutTab)
  m.OutTab <- gsub("Inf%","",m.OutTab)
  
  
  
  if(nchar(placename) != 0) {
    names_spaced <- c("Year","Population","Growth Rate","Population","Growth Rate","Population","Growth Rate") 
    tblHead <- c(" " = 1, placename = 2, ctyname = 2, state = 2)
    names(tblHead) <- c(" ", placename, ctyname,state)
  } else {
    names_spaced <- c("Year","Population","Growth Rate","Population","Growth Rate")
    tblHead <- c(" " = 1, ctyname = 2, state = 2)
    names(tblHead) <- c(" ", ctyname,state)
  }

     OutTab  <- m.OutTab %>%
        kable(format='html', table.attr='class="myTable"',
              caption = "Population Growth Rate",
              row.names=FALSE,
              align='lrrrr',
              col.names = names_spaced,
              escape = FALSE) %>%
        kable_styling(bootstrap_options = "condensed") %>%
        column_spec(1, width = "0.4in") %>%
        column_spec(2, width = "0.5in") %>%
        column_spec(3, width = "0.5in") %>%
        column_spec(4, width = "0.5in") %>%
        column_spec(5, width = "0.5in") %>%
        add_header_above(header=tblHead)  %>%
        add_footnote(captionSrc("SDO",""))

Out of nowhere I have been getting the following error in my development version of R
Warning: Error in rep: invalid 'times' argument
The error occurs at the creation of OutTab, the kable table.
I mean, really out of nowhere. This code has been running on out web server for the past 6 months without a problem.

Any ideas about why this is happening?
TIA

2

sessionInfo() and some sample data (a dput() of the starting m.Out.Tab will do nicely) are going to be important for trying to sort this out, I think.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re only seeing the problem on an R-devel build of R? If so, it may not be worth tracking down a fix — the R development snapshots are likely to contain bugs and/or changes that package authors haven’t adapted to yet. Why not stick to an official release?

3

Some clarifications
By "development" I meant the latest version of R (R version 3.5.0 (2018-04-23)) and the latest version of R Studio (Version 1.1.442) running on my local computer. The code snippets are from a shiny app we have developed.

The data frame (m.OutTab) is as follows:

year Population GrowthRate Population.1 GrowthRate.1
1990 265,708 NA% 3,304,042 NA%
1995 312,593 3.30% 3,811,074 2.90%
2000 351,735 2.40% 4,338,801 2.60%
2005 395,384 2.40% 4,662,534 1.40%
2010 443,711 2.30% 5,050,332 1.60%
2015 489,923 2.00% 5,448,055 1.50%
2016 497,673 1.60% 5,538,180 1.70%

In the data frame, "year" is numeric but all of the other variables are character.

HTH
AB

4

I have located the error,
The " add_footnote(captionSrc("SDO",""))" command is causing the error. The command itself is the problem, I replaced my function call (captionSrc(...)) with a string and still got the error.

Does anyone have any idea what happened to kable_styling to cause this behavior?

5

I really feel stupid, but I solved the issue by changing the "add_footnote..." command with a "footnote..." command, per the kableExtra documentation.

Why this would work is anyone's guess. It seems to me that this is a compatibility issue, there was an update to kableExtra a while back. Apparently the new version was not backward compatible.

So it goes. Now I need to update the rest of my shiny app.
Cheers

6

I'm glad you found a solution that's working for you! Oddly, I wasn't able to reproduce the error:

library(magrittr)
library(kableExtra)

m.OutTab <- readr::read_csv(
  "year,Population,GrowthRate,Population.1,GrowthRate.1
  1990,265708,NA%,3304042,NA%
  1995,312593,3.30%,3811074,2.90%
  2000,351735,2.40%,4338801,2.60%
  2005,395384,2.40%,4662534,1.40%
  2010,443711,2.30%,5050332,1.60%
  2015,489923,2.00%,5448055,1.50%
  2016,497673,1.60%,5538180,1.70%"
)

ctyname <- "Starling City"
state <- "This State"

names_spaced <- c("Year", "Population", "Growth Rate", "Population", "Growth Rate")
tblHead <- c(" " = 1, ctyname = 2, state = 2)
names(tblHead) <- c(" ", ctyname, state)

OutTab  <- m.OutTab %>%
  knitr::kable(format = 'html', table.attr = 'class="myTable"',
        caption = "Population Growth Rate",
        row.names = FALSE,
        align ='lrrrr',
        col.names = names_spaced,
        escape = FALSE) %>%
  kable_styling(bootstrap_options = "condensed") %>%
  column_spec(1, width = "0.4in") %>%
  column_spec(2, width = "0.5in") %>%
  column_spec(3, width = "0.5in") %>%
  column_spec(4, width = "0.5in") %>%
  column_spec(5, width = "0.5in") %>%
  add_header_above(header = tblHead)  %>%
  add_footnote("This is the footnote for the table!")

Created on 2018-06-29 by the reprex package (v0.2.0).

14

> sessioninfo::session_info()
─ Session info ──────────────────────
 setting  value                       
 version  R version 3.5.0 (2018-04-23)
 os       Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS          
 system   x86_64, linux-gnu           
 ui       RStudio                     
 language (EN)                        
 collate  C.UTF-8                     
 tz       Etc/UTC                     
 date     2018-06-29                  

─ Packages ──────────────────────────────────
 package     * version date       source        
 backports     1.1.2   2017-12-13 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 clisymbols    1.2.0   2017-05-21 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 colorspace    1.3-2   2016-12-14 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 digest        0.6.15  2018-01-28 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 evaluate      0.10.1  2017-06-24 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 hms           0.4.2   2018-03-10 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 htmltools     0.3.6   2017-04-28 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 httr          1.3.1   2017-08-20 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 kableExtra  * 0.9.0   2018-05-21 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 knitr         1.20    2018-02-20 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 magrittr    * 1.5     2014-11-22 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 munsell       0.5.0   2018-06-12 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 pillar        1.2.3   2018-05-25 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 pkgconfig     2.0.1   2017-03-21 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 plyr          1.8.4   2016-06-08 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 R6            2.2.2   2017-06-17 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 Rcpp          0.12.17 2018-05-18 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 readr         1.1.1   2017-05-16 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 rlang         0.2.1   2018-05-30 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 rmarkdown     1.10    2018-06-11 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 rprojroot     1.3-2   2018-01-03 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 rstudioapi    0.7     2017-09-07 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 rvest         0.3.2   2016-06-17 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 scales        0.5.0   2017-08-24 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 sessioninfo   1.0.0   2017-06-21 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 stringi       1.2.3   2018-06-12 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 stringr       1.3.1   2018-05-10 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 tibble        1.4.2   2018-01-22 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 viridisLite   0.3.0   2018-02-01 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 withr         2.1.2   2018-03-15 RSPM (R 3.5.0)
 xml2          1.2.0   2018-01-24 RSPM (R 3.5.0)

(I ran this in a new project on RStudio Cloud)

1 Like