I suspect that the issue is addressed (obliquely) in the examples, which shows that variables with spaces in them (or otherwise 'non-syntactic', i.e. not satisfying the constraints of legal R symbols) can be handled by protecting them with backticks (``)
## using non-syntactic names: reformulate(c("`P/E`", "`% Growth`"), response = as.name("+-")) It seems to me there could be room for a *documentation* patch (stating explicitly that if termlabels has length > 1 its elements are concatenated with "+", and explicitly stating that non-syntactic names must be protected with back-ticks). (There is a little bit of obscurity in the fact that the elements of termlabels don't have to be syntactically valid names: many will be included in formulas if they can be interpreted as *parseable* expressions, e.g. reformulate("x<2")) I would be happy to give it a shot if the consensus is that it would be worthwhile. One workaround to the OP's problem is below (may be worth including as an example in docs) > z <- c("a variable","another variable") > reformulate(z) Error in parse(text = termtext, keep.source = FALSE) : <text>:1:6: unexpected symbol 1: ~ a variable ^ > reformulate(sprintf("`%s`",z)) ~`a variable` + `another variable` On 2019-03-29 11:54 a.m., J C Nash wrote: > The main thing is to post the "small reproducible example". > > My (rather long term experience) can be written > > if (exists("reproducible example") ) { > DeveloperFixHappens() > } else { > NULL > } > > JN > > On 2019-03-29 11:38 a.m., Saren Tasciyan wrote: >> Well, first I can't sign in bugzilla myself, that is why I wrote here first. >> Also, I don't know if I have the time at >> the moment to provide tests, multiple examples or more. If that is not ok or >> welcomed, that is fine, I can come back, >> whenever I have more time to properly report the bug. >> >> I didn't find the existing bug report, sorry for that. >> >> Yes, it is related. My problem was that I have column names with spaces and >> current solution doesn't solve it. I have a >> solution, which works for me and maybe also for others. >> >> Either, someone can register me to bugzilla or I can post it here, which >> could give some direction to developers. I >> don't mind whichever is preferred here. >> >> Best, >> >> Saren >> >> >> On 29.03.19 09:29, Martin Maechler wrote: >>>>>>>> Saren Tasciyan >>>>>>>> on Thu, 28 Mar 2019 17:02:10 +0100 writes: >>> > Hi, >>> > I have found a bug in reformulate function and have a solution for >>> it. I >>> > was wondering, where I can submit it? >>> >>> > Best, >>> > Saren >>> >>> >>> Well, you could have given a small reproducible example >>> depicting the bug, notably when posting here: >>> Just a prose text with no R code or other technical content is >>> almost always not really appropriate fo the R-devel mailing list. >>> >>> Further, in such a case you should google a bit and hopefully >>> have found >>> https://www.r-project.org/bugs.html >>> >>> which also mention reproducibility (and many more useful things). >>> >>> Then it also tells you about R's bug repository, also called >>> "R's bugzilla" at https://bugs.r-project.org/ >>> >>> and if you are diligent (but here, I'd say bugzilla is >>> (configured?) far from ideal), you'd also find bug PR#17359 >>> >>> https://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17359 >>> >>> which was reported already on Nov 2017 .. and only fixed >>> yesterday (in the "cleanup old bugs" process that happens >>> often before the big new spring release of R). >>> >>> So is your bug the same as that one? >>> >>> Martin >>> >>> > -- >>> > Saren Tasciyan >>> > /PhD Student / Sixt Group/ >>> > Institute of Science and Technology Austria >>> > Am Campus 1 >>> > 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria >>> >>> > ______________________________________________ >>> > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >>> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >>> >>> ______________________________________________ >>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel