Passing a string value as argument in function

Question

I want to create a function that is going to search through data and find experience values where the condition value equals a particular string. This however yields this error:

Error: evaluation nested too deeply: infinite recursion / options(expressions=)?

Error during wrapup: evaluation nested too deeply: infinite recursion / options(expressions

subset = function(data, ttt="string") {
    subset.cond <- subset(data, Condition==ttt) 
    row.cond <- subset.cond[ which(subset.cond$experience != 0),] 
    row.cond$experience <- factor(row.cond$experience) #drop factor levels
    exp.cond <- levels(row.cond$experience) #get experience names
    cond <- data[ which(data$experience==exp.cond ), ] #cleaned data
    return(list(subset.cond=subset.cond,row.cond=row.cond,exp.cond=exp.cond))
}

subset(data=data_1, ttt="drug1")

Does anyone have any tips? Thanks a lot!

<pre>intensity experience Condition 1.0240835869 n5 drug4 1.6622650638 n5 drug4 0.8888095207 n5 drug4 0.9113421721 n5 drug4 1.2815784814 n11 drug2 0.5038846664 n11 drug2 1.5163685324 n11 drug2 1.315169773 n5 drug1+drug2 1.2837342548 n5 drug1+drug2 1.307013202 n5 drug1+drug2 1.1297371947 n5 drug1+drug2 0.6114186921 n11 drug1+drug2 1.0337745362 n11 drug1+drug2 1.5503374089 n11 drug1+drug2 1.4897651898 n11 drug1+drug2 1.4164219704 n9 drug4 0.6683913411 n9 drug4 2.031900503 n9 drug1 3.5488157902 n9 drug1 2.1030339989 n9 drug1 2.1243746251 n9 drug1</pre> — wondRful
Is that function going to look at a specific column, or the whole dataset? You can use the grepl function that checks if a specific pattern is matched or not. As an example use this grepl("an", c("use","another","example","man")) — AntoniosK

alan ocallaghan alan ocallaghan · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-04T17:37:17

You have written an infinitely recursive function; did you intend to? The first line of the function subset calls subset (ie, it calls itself).

You could get this function to work by specifying that you want to use the base function subset. ie,

subset = function(data, ttt="string") {
    subset.cond <- base::subset(data, Condition==ttt)
    [...]
}

Passing a string value as argument in function

1 Answers