Power BI and self-reference in R

[akennedy]

Hello,

I'm very new to PowerBI, so forgive me if this is a simple question. Exactly how does self reference in R effect the results of a Power BI query? If I were to run a very simple script, say

set.seed(50)
x = rnorm(n = 100, mean = 0, sd = 1)
x = as.data.frame(x)

I get a table, named "X", with a single column, named "get(x)", and a single row, "x"

But when I run a slightly more complicated script

set.seed(50)
x = rnorm(n = 100, mean = 0, sd = 1)
y = as.data.frame(x)

I get a table, named "y", with a single column, named "x", and 100 rows from a normal distribution.

In R, the results are the same, except for the name of the variable. Both scripts result in a data.frame with one column and 100 rows. In PowerBI, I have no idea what's going on. Is it getting stuck on have a data.frame with the exact same name as what it wants to use as the column name?

[akennedy]

That must be it. If the column returned in Power BI were "get('x')" instead of "get(x)", it would return the 100 row data.frame since get() searches for objects by name. The get() documentation page even mentions : "For get, an object name (given as a character string)."

[v-caliao-msft · Accepted solution]

@akennedy,

I have tested this R script in R Studio and Power BI desktop. I get the same result as yours. The issue could be caused the get data mechanism in Power BI. The acceptable thing is that you can use your second script to get your expected dataset currently. I will report this issue internally.

set.seed(50)
x = rnorm(n = 100, mean = 0, sd = 1)
y = as.data.frame(x)

Regards,

Charlie Liao