About the Help category
This category is used to ask questions related to technical issues, particularly coding related. While this category is not explicitly limited to coding questions please note the following before posting here:
- We suggest that for science-based issues or questions that students first ask their instructor either through their class category, in-person/over email, or their school’s LMS (ex. Canvas, Blackboard).
- We welcome questions related to career advice in the Career Advice category.
- Code that is working (as far as we know!) should be placed in the Code Cookbook category. The help category is only for issues that are unresolved.
- Please take a brief look through the previously posted topics here to see whether someone else has previously encountered and resolved the same issue. You can filter by topic using tags (near the top of the category page) or the search function (top-right of the website)
How to help us help you
In order for us to help you we need information about:
- Any original file you are importing into R: Did it come from Galaxy? From a published paper? What format does the file take (ex. .csv, .tabular)? We will use this information to try and replicate the error and look deeper into it.
- The entirety of the relevant code you are using to process the file, including any libraries or packages (analysis software) used. An error can occur in any given part of your code, but that does not mean that the error actually originated from that given line. By showing us all of your code, we can look at all the prior steps and run the code line by line to trace any errors.
- Please do not include code that isn’t relevant to the process (ex. Code from a related analysis that does not interact with the issue at all).
- The error itself – what is the error message that you are getting? These messages can clue us into the problem and can also be searched online to better understand what’s going on.
- Your desired output, if applicable. For example, if you’re trying to make a particular figure or table. This will help us understand your goals and allow us to understand if we’ve actually solved your problem.
Formatting code in a post
Code should be pasted in a code block. To do this, add formatting to your post using the ` character to border your code. You can also select the code and use the </> button to change it to code. You should notice a difference in formatting in your final post.
Learn more
For more information about the culture of bug sharing and getting help on coding forums, please see here.