[R] Basic misunderstanding, or problem with my installation?

[Nordlund, Dan (DSHS/RDA)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Sarah Goslee
> Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2013 4:55 PM
> To: David Parkhurst
> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Basic misunderstanding, or problem with my
> installation?
> 
> Hi David,
> 
> Your code is showing up here with an arrow symbols. If it's an actual
> cut
> and paste, that's your problem: assignment in R is the two-character <-
> and
> not an arrow symbol.
> 
> Otherwise your code looks fine.
> 
> Sarah
> 
> On Tuesday, December 31, 2013, David Parkhurst wrote:
> 
> > I've just uninstalled and then reinstalled R on my windows 7 machine.
> > To test my understanding of data frames, I'm trying the following
> code.
> > (I plan to do other things with it, if it would only work.)
> > Here's the code, which seems pretty basic to me:
> > ls()
> > nums ← c(1,2,3,4,5)
> > ltrs ← c(“a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”)
> > df1 ← data.frame(nums,ltrs)
> >
> > Here's what happens when I try to run it:
> > > ls()
> > character(0)
> > > nums ← c(1,2,3,4,5)
> > Error: unexpected input in "nums \"
> > > ltrs ← c(“a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”)
> > Error: unexpected input in "ltrs \"
> > > df1 ← data.frame(nums,ltrs)
> > Error: unexpected input in "df1 \"
> > >
> >
> > Am I really misunderstanding the basics, or is there something
> > wrong with my installation?
> > David
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/
> > posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
> 

And after you get your assignment operator straightened out, you may need to change the quote marks in your character vector.  It looks like they may be "smart quotes" from a word processor, rather than the plain single or double quote marks that R will accept.

Dan

Daniel J. Nordlund, PhD
Research and Data Analysis Division
Services & Enterprise Support Administration
Washington State Department of Social and Health Services