Error in if (condition) {: missing Value where TRUE/FALSE needed

Question

I would like to create a new column esg.ordered$flowpct <- esg.ordered$flow[i]/lag(esg.ordered$size[i]) for my data frame esg only if the value (/name) in a certain row has the same value (/name) as in the previous row in column fundid. Otherwise the value in column flowpct should have "NA" in the respective rows. Here is my code:

for (i in esg.ordered) {
  if(esg.ordered$fundid[i]==lag(esg.ordered$fundid[i],n=1)){
    esg.ordered$flowpct <- esg.ordered$flow[i]/lag(esg.ordered$size[i])
  }else{
    esg.ordered$flowpct <- "NA"
  }
}

Unfortunately, I get two mistakes:

Error in if (esg.ordered$fundid[i] == lag(esg.ordered$fundid[i], n = 1)) { : missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed
Warning: In if (esg.ordered$fundid[i] == lag(esg.ordered$fundid[i], n = 1)) { : the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be used

Can you guys help me solving these mistakes?

Here is the data

fundid	size	flow
FS00008KNP	78236537	7038075.43
FS00008KNP	73048868	-5691940.56
FS00008KNP	74688822	-193188.79
FS00008KNP	95330799	11991514.11
FS00008L0W	44170465	-15706588.66
FS00008L0W	33278560	-12749545.90
FS00008L0W	26084262	-6879079.19
FS00008L0W	23857701	-3227825.03

Can you provide us with a [Minimal Reproducible Example](https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example)? — DeBARtha, Sep 15 '21 at 10:10
Welcome to SO. You also appear to be attempting to store both chracater and numeric values in `flowpct`. That's likely to cause problems later on. Some sample data would help us to help you. [This post](https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example) may help you create a minimum working example. Finally, a good rule of thumb when using R is "if I'm using a loop, there's probably a better way to do it. This, I suspect, is a case in point. — Limey, Sep 15 '21 at 10:12

r2evans · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-15T13:33:32.913

"NA" is not the same as NA (which might be appropriate there.
for (i in esg.ordered) is wrong: it is iterating over each column in your frame named esg.ordered, so i is a full vector. I think you mean for (i in seq_len(nrow(esg.ordered))).
The error missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed is easily searched and should return (among other links) Error in if/while (condition) {: missing Value where TRUE/FALSE needed. It is because the conditional in if is returning NA.

You appear to be doing something on a whole vector at a time, this is a literal translation of what you are trying to do (but without the for loop):

esg.ordered$flowpct <- ifelse(
  c(TRUE, esg.ordered$fundid[-1] == esg.ordered$fundid[-nrow(esg.ordered)]),
  esg.ordered$flow / c(NA, esg.ordered$size[-nrow(esg.ordered)]),
  NA)
esg.ordered
#       fundid     size        flow      flowpct
# 1 FS00008KNP 78236537   7038075.4           NA
# 2 FS00008KNP 73048868  -5691940.6 -0.072752972
# 3 FS00008KNP 74688822   -193188.8 -0.002644651
# 4 FS00008KNP 95330799  11991514.1  0.160552996
# 5 FS00008L0W 44170465 -15706588.7           NA
# 6 FS00008L0W 33278560 -12749545.9 -0.288644140
# 7 FS00008L0W 26084262  -6879079.2 -0.206712045
# 8 FS00008L0W 23857701  -3227825.0 -0.123746075

However, the relies wholly on fundid being ordered correctly. I think a safer way to go is this, using ave to get the last size within the current fundid, and then dividing:

esg.ordered$flowpct <- with(esg.ordered,
  flow / ave(size, fundid, FUN = function(z) c(NA, z[-length(z)])))

Same results as above, but much safer.

Thank you for helping me :) trying my best to understand your suggestions and I will give you my data in a sec — CodingGirl, Sep 15 '21 at 12:08
See the edit. This is still a dupe of the two links provided (the error and the warning), I suggest you click on the dupe-links and read up on several of the excellent answers/comments about the problems. As for the calculation itself, I offer two suggestions, I urge you to use the second (`ave`) as it is much more robust to ordering of the data (i.e., `fundid` does not need to be contiguous/ordered). — r2evans, Sep 15 '21 at 13:33
Thank you so much again, I have tried your suggestion and it works! You really saved the day!! :) — CodingGirl, Sep 15 '21 at 13:39

Error in if (condition) {: missing Value where TRUE/FALSE needed

1 Answers1