$ operator is invalid for atomic vectors – R Error

In R language, you get the error, “$ operator is invalid for atomic vectors” when you try to apply $ to a non-recursive object. As in the R language documentation –

The form using $ applies to recursive objects such as lists and pairlists. It allows only a literal character string or a symbol as the index. That is, the index is not computable: for cases where you need to evaluate an expression to find the index, use x[[expr]]. Applying $ to a non-recursive object is an error.

So, for atomic vectors, you should use x[i] notation. Check this code –

> x <- rnorm(5)
> x
[1] -0.12526937 -0.27961154 -1.03718717 -0.08156527  1.37167090
> x[2]
[1] -0.2796115

If it’s a list, then you can use x$a or x[[i]] notation. Check the code below –

> x <- list("Red", "Green", c(21,32,11), TRUE, 51.23, 119.1)
> x[[2]]
[1] Green
> names(x) <- c("red_color", "green_color", "vector_", "bool_", "float_51_23", "fload_119_1")
> x$`green_color`
[1] Green

Check if vector is atomic or recursive

If you have doubts whether your declared vector is atomic or recursive, you can use is.recursive(x) and is.atomic(x) –

> x <- rnorm(5)
> is.recursive(x)
[1] FALSE
> is.atomic(x)
[1] TRUE

Convert vector to list

You can also convert a vector to the list using as.list(x) command. This way you will be able to use x$a notation for your atomic vector. Check this code –

> x <- c(1, 2)
x
> names(x) <- c("bob", "ed")
> x <- as.list(t(x))
> x$ed
[1] 2

There are number of operators in R which could come in handy for you –

-	Minus, can be unary or binary
+	Plus, can be unary or binary
!	Unary not
~	Tilde, used for model formulae, can be either unary or binary
?	Help
:	Sequence, binary (in model formulae: interaction)
*	Multiplication, binary
/	Division, binary
^	Exponentiation, binary
%x%	Special binary operators, x can be replaced by any valid name
%%	Modulus, binary
%/%	Integer divide, binary
%*%	Matrix product, binary
%o%	Outer product, binary
%x%	Kronecker product, binary
%in%	Matching operator, binary (in model formulae: nesting)
<	Less than, binary
>	Greater than, binary
==	Equal to, binary
>=	Greater than or equal to, binary
<=	Less than or equal to, binary
&	And, binary, vectorized
&&	And, binary, not vectorized
|	Or, binary, vectorized
||	Or, binary, not vectorized
<-	Left assignment, binary
->	Right assignment, binary
$	List subset, binary

    Tweet this to help others

Live Demo