Using tryCatch function of R in a loop

Question

I want to use tryCatch function in a loop which sometimes works but sometimes it does not, and I do not know where does it have errors to solve the problem and create a loop

Answer 1

The reason is a that one of the elements in the vector is character and a vector cannot have mixed types. So, it is coerced to character. Instead we should have a list where each element can have different types

x <- list(1,2,"a" , 4)

Now, running the OP' code gives

for (i in x) {
   y <- tryCatch(print(sqrt(i)) , error= function(e) {return(0)}  )
   if (y==0) {print("NOT POSSIBLE")
              next}
 }
#[1] 1
#[1] 1.414214
#[1] "NOT POSSIBLE"
#[1] 2

---

If we can use only a vector, then there should be a provision to convert it to numeric within the loop, but it would also return an NA for the third element as

as.numeric('a')
#[1] NA

Warning message: NAs introduced by coercion

and ends the for loop