[R] Getting a Error: unexpected symbol in:

[Jeff Newmiller]

The body of a function needs to be wrapped in one pair of braces.

diffdate<-function(x,y){
        z<-unclass(as.Date(x))
        z1<-unclass(as.Date(y))
        return(z1-z)
 }

It is common in R to make sure that date values are of the appropriate type before you call the function instead of doing it over and over in this and various other functions you might use. If you give the function Date values instead of character strings you can shorten your function because you can do Date arithmetic directly on them. You also don't need the return statement since you are at the end of the code block already.

diffdate2 <- function(x,y){
        as.numeric(y-x)
 }

in1 <- "2014-12-12"
in2 <- "2014-10-12"
in1 <- as.Date(in1)
in2 <- as.Date(in2)
diffdate2(in1,in2)

The expectation that specific types of data will be used is the reason that we are so picky on this mailing list about getting sample data along with sample code... so we know all the pieces of the puzzle that might be giving you trouble.
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Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On December 12, 2014 1:43:13 PM PST, Sajjad Jafri <sjafri83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>I am trying to create a simple function that finds the number of days
>between two dates. However, when I run the  function, R gives me an
>error
>message saying:
>
>
>
>unexpected '}' in "        }"
>
>Here is my function:
>
>#create a function that finds the number of days between two dates
>diffdate<-function(x,y){
>        z<-unclass(as.Date(x))
>        z1<-unclass(as.Date(y))
>        }
>        {
>                return z1-z
>        }
>
>	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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