R Error in cut.default : ‘breaks’ are not unique (2 Examples)

In this article, you’ll learn how to handle the “Error in cut.default : ‘breaks’ are not unique” in R.

The content of the page looks like this:

Let’s take a look at some R codes in action…

Creation of Example Data

To start with, let’s create some example data:

x <- 1:10                             # Create example vector
x                                     # Print example vector
#  [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

As you can see based on the previous RStudio console output, the example data is a numeric vector ranging from 1 to 10.

Example 1: Reproduce the Error in cut.default : ‘breaks’ are not unique

This example shows how to replicate the “Error in cut.default : ‘breaks’ are not unique” in the R programming language.

Let’s assume that we want to split our vector object by certain breaks using the cut function. Then, we might try to run the following R code:

cut(x, breaks = c(0, 1, 1, 2, 10))    # Reproduce error
# Error in cut.default(x, breaks = c(0, 1, 1, 2, 10)) : 
#   'breaks' are not unique

Unfortunately, the previous R syntax has returned the “Error in cut.default : ‘breaks’ are not unique”. The reason for this is that we have specified the same break value twice within the cut function (i.e. the break at the value 1).

Example 2: Fix the Error in cut.default : ‘breaks’ are not unique

In Example 2, I’ll show how to avoid the “”Error in cut.default : ‘breaks’ are not unique”.

For this, we simply have to remove all duplicated elements from our vector of breaks:

cut(x, breaks = c(0, 1, 2, 10))       # Resolve error
#  [1] (0,1]  (1,2]  (2,10] (2,10] (2,10] (2,10] (2,10] (2,10] (2,10] (2,10]
# Levels: (0,1] (1,2] (2,10]

Works fine!

Video & Further Resources

Do you want to learn more about the dealing with the “Error in cut.default : ‘breaks’ are not unique”? Then you may watch the following video on my YouTube channel. I illustrate the examples of this tutorial in the video:

The YouTube video will be added soon.

Furthermore, you may want to have a look at some of the other tutorials on this website. You can find some tutorials on similar topics such as coding errors and lines below:

• Error in as.POSIXlt.character : string not standard unambiguous format
• predict Error in eval(predvars, data, env) : numeric ‘envir’ arg not of length one
• Error in scan: Line 1 did not have X Elements
• Error in read.table: duplicate ‘row.names’ are not allowed
• Solving Error & Warning Messages in R (Example Codes)
• R Programming Language

Summary: In this tutorial, I have demonstrated how to deal with the “Error in cut.default : ‘breaks’ are not unique” in R. Please tell me about it in the comments section, if you have additional questions.