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I'm working on a linear regression.

The error reported during construction of the regression model was:

Error: unexpected input in "reg1 <- lm(años_escolaridad ∼"
IRTFM
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Ardi
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  • Welcome to StackOverflow. In order to ask a better question please take the [tour](https://stackoverflow.com/tour), read [How to ask a good question](https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask) and [Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) and [How to make a great R reproducible example](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64336498/r-multiple-lines-on-a-chart5963269/how-to-make-a-great-r-reproducible-example). Include data and the code you have tried in the question, please. – Rui Barradas Dec 14 '21 at 23:09
  • I edited the question body to correct spelling and remove the unnecessary (misspelled thanks). You are expected to use proper capitalization and apostrophes for contractions. There was enough information to answer the question which I will do now. – IRTFM Dec 14 '21 at 23:12
  • Arrrgh. The question did NOT "need debugging details". There was already enough information to give an unequivocally correct answer to "why" that particular error would occur with that particular code fragment in the title by pasting exactly those characters in the question title (along with sufficient padding to get the parser to scan them) into an R console session and duplicating that error with no data needed. I have searched for a duplicate but so far have been unable to locate one. Seems likely that others will encounter similar difficulties in the future Hence my vote to re-open. – IRTFM Dec 14 '21 at 23:41
  • @IRTFM Reopened now. I do think the actually body of the question should be edited to be something more than it currently is though. – Dason Dec 15 '21 at 00:28
  • @Dason. This type of error occurs at the stage of parsing prior to any examination of the workspace for values to gather for computation. I'm wondering if there are any SO Q&A's about the stages of interpreter processing that R performs that would inform users who need to interpret error messages? – IRTFM Dec 15 '21 at 00:35

1 Answers1

2

The error you are receiving is coming from the fact that your tilde "∼" is not the real tilde "~". Notice that the tilde you used is longer. Only the tilde with an ASCII value of 126 will succeed as a proper infix shorthand to the formula function:

R.oo::charToInt("~")
[1] 126
R.oo::charToInt("∼")
[1] NA

I don't know how you got that false imitator but maybe you were using MS Word or some other word processing software to put in a tilde that was non-ASCII.

 f <-  z ~ x + y
 f
#z ~ x + y    Successful creation of a formula object
 f2 <-  z ∼ x + y
#Error: unexpected input in "f2 <-  z ∼" Failure to create formula
IRTFM
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  • I'm not sure. The OP doesn't say how it got into the code. It's certainly not something that you could easily recognize by looking at it. And I think the answer has reference to potentially useful utility functions. – IRTFM Dec 31 '21 at 21:24
  • In this case the text of the error message was enough. That's an unusual occurrence I will admit. Generally people who just post error messages fail to understand that only with full context can we help. I suppose by spotting that unusual pseudo-tilde character and demonstrating how to diagnose the issue, I have now given the OP the impression that just posting error messages is typical SO fare. I hope OP did not form that opinion. – IRTFM Dec 31 '21 at 21:44