My R function doesn't seem to be using the arguments I give it

August 31, 2022

I have created an R function that doesn’t seem to be using the arguments that I give it. It runs but the result is not the one I should be getting given the parameters I pass to it. The code I have is as follows:

test_function <- function(text1, text2, number1) {
    if (length(text1) == length(text2)) {
        print("Equal")
    } else {
        print("Not equal")
    }
    operation <- length(text1) + number1
    print(paste("The result for the operation is: "), operation)
}

x <- "Hello"
y <- "World!"
z <- 10

test_function(x, y, z)

Does anyone know why the result I’m getting is the following?

[1] "Equal"
[1] "The result for the operation is: "

>Solution :

Use nchar() instead of length().

In addition, paste("The result for the operation is:", operation).

test_function <- function(text1, text2, number1) {
    if (nchar(text1) == nchar(text2)) {
        print("Equal")
    } else {
        print("Not equal")
    }
    operation <- nchar(text1) + number1
    print(paste("The result for the operation is:", operation))
}

x <- "Hello"
y <- "World!"
z <- 10

test_function(x, y, z)
#[1] "Not equal"
#[1] "The result for the operation is: 15"