The error means that R could not find the variable mentioned in the error message.
The easiest way to reproduce the error is to type the name of a variable that doesn't exist. (If you've defined x already, use a different variable name.)
x
## Error: object 'x' not found
The more complex version of the error has the same cause: calling a function when x does not exist.
mean(x)
## Error in mean(x) :
## error in evaluating the argument 'x' in selecting a method for function 'mean': Error: object 'x' not found
Once the variable has been defined, the error will not occur.
x <- 1:5
x
## [1] 1 2 3 4 5
mean(x)
## [1] 3
You can check to see if a variable exists using ls or exists.
ls() # lists all the variables that have been defined
exists("x") # returns TRUE or FALSE, depending upon whether x has been defined.
Errors like this can occur when you are using non-standard evaluation. For example, when using subset, the error will occur if a column name is not present in the data frame to subset.
d <- data.frame(a = rnorm(5))
subset(d, b > 0)
## Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos) : object 'b' not found
The error can also occur if you use custom evaluation.
get("var", "package:stats") #returns the var function
get("var", "package:utils")
## Error in get("var", "package:utils") : object 'var' not found
In the second case, the var function cannot be found when R looks in the utils package's environment because utils is further down the search list than stats.
In more advanced use cases, you may wish to read:
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