Open In App

How to Fix in R: Replacement has length zero

Improve
Improve
Like Article
Like
Save
Share
Report

In this article, we will discuss how to fix the error of replacement has length zero in the R programming language.

Replacement has length zero:

The R compiler produces such an error. Generally, this error takes the below form:

Error in vect[0] : replacement has length zero

The compiler produces this error when a programmer tries to replace a value in a vector with some other value but the other value has a length equal to zero which implies that the other value has no existence.

When this error might occur:

Consider an example in which we have a vector initialized with 5 five values.

R




# Initializing a vector
vect = c(5, 8, 4, 12, 15)


Now suppose we want to iterate over the vector and at each step of the iteration we want to assign the sum of the current value and the value stored at the previous position at the current position.

R




# Initializing a vector
vect = c(5, 8, 4, 12, 15)
  
# Iterate over the vector
for (i in 1 : length(vect)) {
    
  # Assign sum
  vect[i] = vect[i] + vect[i - 1]
}


Output:

Output

The R compiler produces this error because of the case:

vect[1] = vect[1] + vect[0]

This is because indexing in R begins from 1. Hence, vect[0] doesn’t exist.

We can confirm that vect[0] doesn’t exist by simply printing the value:

Example:

R




# Print the value stored at the index 0
print(vect[0]


Output:

Output

The output is a numeric vector having a length equal to zero.

Fixing the error:

We can fix this error by simply taking care of the case that may access the value that doesn’t exist during the iteration.

Example:

R




# Initializing a vector
vect = c(5, 8, 4, 12, 15)
  
# Iterate over the vector
for (i in 2 : length(vect)) {
    
      # Assign sum
    vect[i] = vect[i] + vect[i - 1]
      
    # Print the value
    print(vect[i])
}


Output:

Output



Last Updated : 18 Mar, 2022
Like Article
Save Article
Previous
Next
Share your thoughts in the comments
Similar Reads