Error: Unexpected ‘,’ or ‘=’ or ‘)’ in R (Examples) | How to Reproduce & Fix

This article shows how to deal with the errors “unexpected ‘,’ or ‘=’ or ‘)’ in X” in R.

The tutorial is structured as follows:

Let’s start right away.

Example 1: Reproduce the Errors – unexpected ‘,’ or ‘=’ or ‘)’ in X

In Example 1, I’ll illustrate how to fix the “unexpected” error when the symbols ‘,’ or ‘=’ or ‘)’ are applied wrong.

Let’s reproduce the errors in R. The following R code leads to the error message “unexpected ‘,’ in ‘,'”…

,                 # Reproducing the error
# Error: unexpected ',' in ","

…the next R syntax leads to the error “unexpected ‘=’ in ‘='”…

=                 # Reproducing the error
 # Error: unexpected '=' in "="

…and this R code causes the error message “unexpected ‘)’ in ‘)'”:

)               # Reproducing the error
# Error: unexpected ')' in ")"

In all of these cases the error message occurred because we have not applied the corresponding symbols properly, i.e. we did not add any other R syntax to these symbols.

Example 2: Fix the Errors – unexpected ‘,’ or ‘=’ or ‘)’ in X

The following R programming syntax shows an example how to use the comma symbol properly…

c(1, 4, 7)        # Proper application of ,
# 1 4 7

…the next R code uses the equal sign in an appropriate way…

x = 5             # Proper application of =
x
# 5

…and this code uses parentheses correctly:

mean(1:5)         # Proper application of )
# 3

Video, Further Resources & Summary

Have a look at the following video of my YouTube channel. In the video, I’m explaining the R code of this article in a live programming session.

In addition, you might read some of the related articles of this website:

• Handling Errors & Warnings in R (List with Examples)
• R Programming Overview

In summary: You learned in this article how to handle the error messages “unexpected ‘,’ or ‘=’ or ‘)’ in X” in R programming. Let me know in the comments, in case you have additional questions and/or comments.