[minor enhancement] suggested rewording for missing column error for clarity

[D3SL]

When trying to compare two dataframes where at least one column is missing the error message given is Error: Can't find column '<Missing column name>' in'.data'`.

In my case I had a column named "Type" in old_df (made by subsetting a parent set by type) that wasn't in some newly produced data, printing the error Error: Can't find column 'Type' in '.data'. I wound up misreading this as referring not to a column named "Type" but to something attribute of the columns themselves (ie their "type").

Tweaking the error message slightly would greatly reduce the potential for misunderstandings, particularly among people who aren't fluent in English:

If possible: Error: Column named '<Missing column name>' is found in 'df1' but not in 'df2'

Or if its too much work to name the frames like that: Error: Column named '<Missing column name>' is missing from one of the chosen objects

[alexsanjoseph]

I think the ^ formatting got screwed because of some github issues.

Can you give a representatie example?

Good suggestions - I can fix this

[D3SL]

Yeah they're not escaping backticks properly and trying to string a bunch of them together to get them to show is irritating. I just replaced them with singlequotes.

Here's a really simple reprex. Just run compare_df on these two and it'll give you the error that the third column from testtibble1 (named "Type") is missing.

testtibble1<-tribble(
  ~colA, ~colB, ~Type,
  "a",   1, foo,
  "b",   2, bar,
  "c",   3, baz
)

testtibble2<-tribble(
  ~colA, ~colB,
  "a",   1,
  "b",   2,
  "c",   3
)

[alexsanjoseph]

Thanks - Will add this for future

[alexsanjoseph]

@D3SL

Can you verify your reprex again? On running, I'm getting a different error:

testtibble1<-tribble(
  ~colA, ~colB, ~Type,
  "a",   1, 'foo',
  "b",   2, 'bar',
  "c",   3, 'baz'
)

testtibble2<-tribble(
  ~colA, ~colB,
  "a",   1,
  "b",   2,
  "c",   3
)

> compare_df(testtibble1, testtibble2, group_col = c("Type"))
---------------------
Error in check_if_comparable(both_tables$df_new, both_tables$df_old, group_col,  : 
  The two data frames have different columns!

[alexsanjoseph]

Closing since I'm unable to reproduce the error. Please reopen if necessary

[D3SL]

You're right, it must be something local. I can't reproduce it on a second machine but I can consistently get it to look like this screenshot on my work computer.