R Unary operator error from multiline ggplot2 command

Question

I m using ggplot2 to do a boxplot comparison of two different species  as indicated by the third column shown below    gt  library reshape2   gt  library ggplot2   gt  melt data   melt actb raw data    gt  head actb raw data    region  expression species 1     CG -0 17686667   human 2     CG -0 06506667   human 3     DG  1 04590000   human 4    CA1  1 94093333   human 5    CA2  1 55023333   human 6    CA3  1 75800000   human   gt  head melt data    region species   variable       value 1     CG   human expression -0 17686667 2     CG   human expression -0 06506667 3     DG   human expression  1 04590000 4    CA1   human expression  1 94093333 5    CA2   human expression  1 55023333 6    CA3   human expression  1 75800000   However  when I run the following code   ggplot combined data  aes x   region  y   expression  fill   species           geom boxplot           scale fill manual values   c  yellow    orange          ggtitle  Expression comparisons for ACTB         theme axis text x   element text angle 90  face  bold   colour  black      I get this error     gt  ggplot actb raw data  aes x   region  y   expression  fill   species             geom boxplot             scale fill manual values   c  yellow    orange    Error in  geom boxplot     invalid argument to unary operator  gt    ggtitle  ACTB expression in human vs  macaque   Error in  ggtitle  ACTB expression in human vs  macaque       invalid argument to unary operator  gt    theme axis text x   element text angle 90  face  bold   colour  black    Error in inherits x   theme     argument  e2  is missing  with no default   This also happens when I run using the variable melt data  for whatever that s worth  Can someone help me fix this  I ve run this code successfully before with a different dataset that was formatted identically  and I can t figure out what s going wrong here

User · Answer

It s the     operator at the beginning of the line that trips things up  not just that you are using two     operators consecutively   The     operator can be used at the end of lines  but not at the beginning   This works   ggplot combined data  aes x   region  y   expression  fill   species     geom boxplot      The does not   ggplot combined data  aes x   region  y   expression  fill   species     geom boxplot      Error in   geom boxplot    invalid argument to unary operator    You also can t use two     operators  which in this case you ve done  But to fix this  you ll have to selectively remove those at the beginning of lines

User · Answer

Try to consolidate the syntax in a single line  this will clear the error

User · Answer

This is a well-known nuisance when posting multiline commands in R   You can get different behavior when you source   a script to when you copy-and-paste the lines  both with multiline and comments  Rule  always put the dangling     at the end of a line so R knows the command is unfinished  ggplot        geom whatever1          geom whatever2          stat whatever3          geom title        scale y log10       Don t put the dangling     at the start of the line  since that tickles the error  Error in  quot   geom whatever2      invalid argument to unary operator quot  And obviously don t put dangling     at both end and start since that s a syntax error  So  learn a habit of being consistent  always put     at end-of-line  cf  answer to  quot Split code over multiple lines in an R script quot

User · Answer

It looks like you might have inserted an extra   at the beginning of each line  which R is interpreting as a unary operator  like - interpreted as negation  rather than subtraction    I think what will work is  ggplot combined data  aes x   region  y   expression  fill   species         geom boxplot         scale fill manual values   c  yellow    orange           ggtitle  Expression comparisons for ACTB          theme axis text x   element text angle 90  face  bold   colour  black      Perhaps you copy and pasted from the output of an R console   The console uses   at the start of the line when the input is incomplete

[r] R: "Unary operator error" from multiline ggplot2 command

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