Error unexpected symbol input string constant numeric constant SPECIAL in my code

Question

I received one of these errors     Error  unexpected symbol in   lt my code gt       Error  unexpected input in   lt my code gt   Error  unexpected string constant in   lt my code gt     Error  unexpected numeric constant in   lt my code gt      Error  unexpected SPECIAL in   lt my code gt            Error  unexpected   lt some punctuation gt   in   lt my code gt    Error  unexpected   lt reserved word gt   in   lt my code gt             What does the error mean  and how can I fix it   Some simple examples that reproduce the errors  and common variants   a a    Error  unexpected symbol in  a a  a     Error  unexpected input in  a   a      Error  unexpected string constant in  a      1    Error  unexpected numeric constant in    1        Error  unexpected SPECIAL in           Error  unexpected     in          Error  unexpected     in          Error  unexpected     in     else    Error  unexpected  else  in  else

User · Answer

For me the error was   Error  unexpected input in       and the fix was opening the script in a hex editor and removing the first 3 characters from the file  The file was starting with an UTF-8 BOM and it seems that Rscript can t read that   EDIT  OP requested an example  Here it goes        cat a R cat  hello world n        xxd a R 00000000  efbb bf63 6174 2827 6865 6c6c 6f20 776f     cat  hello wo 00000010  726c 645c 6e27 290a                      rld n         R -f a R          R version 3 4 4  2018-03-15  --  Someone to Lean On  Copyright  C  2018 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing Platform  x86 64-pc-linux-gnu  64-bit   R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY  You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions  Type  license    or  licence    for distribution details     Natural language support but running in an English locale  R is a collaborative project with many contributors  Type  contributors    for more information and  citation    on how to cite R or R packages in publications   Type  demo    for some demos   help    for on-line help  or  help start    for an HTML browser interface to help  Type  q    to quit R    gt  cat  hello world n   Error  unexpected input in     Execution halted

User · Answer

If you are copy-pasting code into R  it sometimes won t accept some special characters such as  quot   quot  and will appear instead as a  quot   quot   So if a certain character is giving an error  make sure to use your keyboard to enter the character  or find another website to copy-paste from if that doesn t work

User · Answer

These errors mean that the R code you are trying to run or source is not syntactically correct   That is  you have a typo   To fix the problem  read the error message carefully   The code provided in the error message shows where R thinks that the problem is   Find that line in your original code  and look for the typo     Prophylactic measures to prevent you getting the error again  The best way to avoid syntactic errors is to write stylish code   That way  when you mistype things  the problem will be easier to spot   There are many R style guides linked from the SO R tag info page   You can also use the formatR package to automatically format your code into something more readable   In RStudio  the keyboard shortcut CTRL   SHIFT   A will reformat your code   Consider using an IDE or text editor that highlights matching parentheses and braces  and shows strings and numbers in different colours     Common syntactic mistakes that generate these errors  Mismatched parentheses  braces or brackets  If you have nested parentheses  braces or brackets it is very easy to close them one too many or too few times          Error  unexpected     in              OK     Missing   when doing multiplication     This is a common mistake by mathematicians   5x Error  unexpected symbol in  5x  5 x   OK     Not wrapping if  for  or return values in parentheses  This is a common mistake by MATLAB users   In R  if  for  return  etc   are functions  so you need to wrap their contents in parentheses   if x  gt  0       Error  unexpected symbol in  if x  if x  gt  0       OK     Not using multiple lines for code  Trying to write multiple expressions on a single line  without separating them by semicolons causes R to fail  as well as making your code harder to read       x   2 y   3    Error  unexpected symbol in  x   2 y  x   2  y   3   OK     else starting on a new line  In an if-else statement  the keyword else must appear on the same line as the end of the if block   if TRUE  1 else 2    Error  unexpected  else  in  else      if TRUE  1 else 2   OK if TRUE       1   else              also OK     2         instead of       is used for assignment and giving values to function arguments      tests two values for equality   if x   0        Error  unexpected     in  if x        if x    0       OK     Missing commas between arguments    When calling a function  each argument must be separated by a comma       c 1 2     Error  unexpected numeric constant in  c 1 2  c 1  2    OK     Not quoting file paths  File paths are just strings   They need to be wrapped in double or single quotes   path expand       Error  unexpected     in  path expand     path expand        OK     Quotes inside strings      This is a common problem when trying to pass quoted values to the shell via system  or creating quoted xPath or sql queries   Double quotes inside a double quoted string need to be escaped   Likewise  single quotes inside a single quoted string need to be escaped  Alternatively  you can use single quotes inside a double quoted string without escaping  and vice versa    x y     Error  unexpected symbol in   x y      x  y    OK  x y     OK       Using curly quotes  So-called  smart  quotes are not so smart for R programming   path expand             Error  unexpected input in  path expand          path expand        OK     Using non-standard variable names without backquotes       make names describes what constitutes a valid variable name   If you create a non-valid variable name  using assign  perhaps   then you need to access it with backquotes   assign  x y   0  x y    Error  unexpected symbol in  x y   x y    OK   This also applies to column names in data frames created with check names   FALSE   dfr  lt - data frame  x y    1 5  check names   FALSE  dfr x y    Error  unexpected symbol in  dfr x y  dfr   x y     OK dfr  x y      also OK   It also applies when passing operators and other special values to functions   For example  looking up help on  in      in     Error  unexpected SPECIAL in    in      in     OK     Sourcing non-R code  The source function runs R code from a file   It will break if you try to use it to read in your data   Probably you want read table    source textConnection  x y       Error in source textConnection  x y            textConnection  x y   1 3  unexpected symbol    1  x y                Corrupted RStudio desktop file      RStudio users have reported erroneous source errors due to a corrupted   rstudio-desktop file   These reports only occurred around March 2014  so it is possibly an issue with a specific version of the IDE   RStudio can be reset using the instructions on the support page     Using expression without paste in mathematical plot annotations  When trying to create mathematical labels or titles in plots  the expression created must be a syntactically valid mathematical expression as described on the  plotmath page   Otherwise the contents should be contained inside a call to paste   plot rnorm 10   ylab   expression alpha           Error  unexpected     in  plot rnorm 10   ylab   expression alpha      plot rnorm 10   ylab   expression paste alpha   phantom 0            OK

[r] Error: unexpected symbol/input/string constant/numeric constant/SPECIAL in my code

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