How to Fix in R: error in rep(1, n) : invalid ‘times’ argument

One error you may encounter in R is:

Error in rep(1, times = -4) : invalid 'times' argument

This error occurs when you provide one of the following values to the times argument within the rep() function:

Since the rep() function replicates elements a certain number of times, only a non-negative value in the times argument is valid to use.

This tutorial shares exactly how to fix this error.

How to Reproduce the Error

Suppose we attempt to replicate the value “1” -4 times:

#attempt to replicate "1" -4 times
rep(1, times = -4)

Error in rep(1, times = -4) : invalid 'times' argument

Or suppose we attempt to replicate the value “1” NA times:

#attempt to replicate "1" NA times
rep(1, times = NA)

Error in rep(1, times = NA) : invalid 'times' argument

Or suppose we attempt to replicate the value “1” both 2 times and 3 times:

#attempt to replicate "1" 2 times and 3 times
rep(1, times = c(2, 3))

Error in rep(1, times = c(2, 3)) : invalid 'times' argument

We receive an error in each scenario because we failed to provide a non-negative value to the times argument in each scenario.

The way to fix this error is to simply provide a non-negative value to the times argument in the rep() function.

For example, the following code shows how to replicate the value “1” 7 times:

#replicate 1 7 times
rep(1, times = 7)

[1] 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

The value “1” is replicated 7 times and we don’t receive any error because we provided a valid value to the times argument.

The following tutorials explain how to fix other common errors in R: