Part of trying new thinghs is occasionally getting stuck and needing help. Fortunately, you’re not alone, and if you can’t find a previous example of how to make something work, you can ask for help from the community of R folks. Here are some tips to make this process as helpful and efficient as possible.
There are a few websites that are useful for getting help with R.
| Website | Purpose |
|---|---|
| R Documentation | Searchable documentation for R packages on CRAN and Bioconductor |
| Bioconductor Support | Support forum for Bioconductor packages |
| stackoverflow | General programming questions |
| Biostars | Bioinformatics specific questions |
| R for data science | An extremely readable website book that goes soup to nuts. |
| RWeekly | Short kind of random tips/tidbits updated weekly |
| Posit Community Forum | Questions asked and answered |
| Posit: Cheatsheets | Super handy since no one has all the packages memorized |
| Posit: Getting help with R | Curated links by the posit team |
If you can’t find the right solution already posted, you you can post your new question to a forum. R’s Posting Guide examples of how to ask for help with R. It’s a good read - but here’s the condensed version:
I have this data frame:
my_data = read_csv("start, end, title
8:00, 4:00, Using R/R Studio
1:00, 4:00, Nextflow: Train the Trainers
8:00, 4:00, Lean Management for Shared Resources
")
But I want this data frame:
title workshop time
Using R/R Studio start 08:00
Using R/R Studio end 04:00
Nextflow: Train the Trainers start 01:00
Nextflow: Train the Trainers end 04:00
Lean Management for Shared Resources start 08:00
Lean Management for Shared Resources end 04:00
Note that sharing minimal example data often means you need to trim the data down to a small subset
read_csv allows you to
“handcraft” data as a comma separated list of fields, one row per
field.iris or mtcars. You can see the full list of
built in datasets with data().format_csv and head to
prune a larger dataset to a few rows,
e.g. cat(format_csv(head(mtcars))) to then copy into your
post.sessionInfo command which will work in any R
environment:################################################################################
# Print out details about this R install, session, and loaded libraries
sessionInfo()R version 4.4.3 (2025-02-28)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Running under: Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS
Matrix products: default
BLAS: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libblas.so.3
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/liblapack.so.3; LAPACK version 3.9.0
locale:
[1] LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=C.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE=C.UTF-8 LC_MONETARY=C.UTF-8
[6] LC_MESSAGES=C.UTF-8 LC_PAPER=C.UTF-8 LC_NAME=C LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=C.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
time zone: UTC
tzcode source: system (glibc)
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
other attached packages:
[1] ggrepel_0.9.6 RColorBrewer_1.1-3 lubridate_1.9.4 forcats_1.0.0 stringr_1.5.1 dplyr_1.1.4
[7] purrr_1.0.4 readr_2.1.5 tidyr_1.3.1 tibble_3.2.1 ggplot2_3.5.1 tidyverse_2.0.0
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] vctrs_0.6.5 cli_3.6.4 rlang_1.1.5 stringi_1.8.7 generics_0.1.3 glue_1.8.0
[7] colorspace_2.1-1 hms_1.1.3 scales_1.3.0 grid_4.4.3 munsell_0.5.1 tzdb_0.5.0
[13] lifecycle_1.0.4 compiler_4.4.3 sessioninfo_1.2.3 Rcpp_1.1.0 timechange_0.3.0 pkgconfig_2.0.3
[19] rstudioapi_0.17.1 R6_2.6.1 tidyselect_1.2.1 pillar_1.10.2 magrittr_2.0.3 tools_4.4.3
[25] withr_3.0.2 gtable_0.3.6 The new, slightly more elegant is
sessioninfo::session_info(). (Note, the
sessioninfo package must be installed. We did that for
you.)
################################################################################
# A more concise, pleasant version of sessionInfo()
# install.packages('session_info')
sessioninfo::session_info()─ Session info ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
setting value
version R version 4.4.3 (2025-02-28)
os Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS
system x86_64, linux-gnu
ui RStudio
language (EN)
collate C.UTF-8
ctype C.UTF-8
tz UTC
date 2026-02-04
rstudio 2025.05.1+513.pro3 Mariposa Orchid (server)
pandoc NA
quarto 1.8.27 @ /usr/bin/quarto
─ Packages ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
package * version date (UTC) lib source
cli 3.6.4 2025-02-13 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
colorspace 2.1-1 2024-07-26 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
dplyr * 1.1.4 2023-11-17 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
forcats * 1.0.0 2023-01-29 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
generics 0.1.3 2022-07-05 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
ggplot2 * 3.5.1 2024-04-23 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
ggrepel * 0.9.6 2024-09-07 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.3)
glue 1.8.0 2024-09-30 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
gtable 0.3.6 2024-10-25 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
hms 1.1.3 2023-03-21 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
lifecycle 1.0.4 2023-11-07 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
lubridate * 1.9.4 2024-12-08 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
magrittr 2.0.3 2022-03-30 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
munsell 0.5.1 2024-04-01 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
pillar 1.10.2 2025-04-05 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
pkgconfig 2.0.3 2019-09-22 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
purrr * 1.0.4 2025-02-05 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
R6 2.6.1 2025-02-15 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
RColorBrewer * 1.1-3 2022-04-03 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
Rcpp 1.1.0 2025-07-02 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.3)
readr * 2.1.5 2024-01-10 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
rlang 1.1.5 2025-01-17 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
rstudioapi 0.17.1 2024-10-22 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
scales 1.3.0 2023-11-28 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
sessioninfo 1.2.3 2025-02-05 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
stringi 1.8.7 2025-03-27 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
stringr * 1.5.1 2023-11-14 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
tibble * 3.2.1 2023-03-20 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
tidyr * 1.3.1 2024-01-24 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
tidyselect 1.2.1 2024-03-11 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
tidyverse * 2.0.0 2023-02-22 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
timechange 0.3.0 2024-01-18 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
tzdb 0.5.0 2025-03-15 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
vctrs 0.6.5 2023-12-01 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
withr 3.0.2 2024-10-28 [1] RSPM (R 4.4.0)
[1] /cloud/lib/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.4
[2] /opt/R/4.4.3/lib/R/library
* ── Packages attached to the search path.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────“All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we’re giving or
receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this
world.”
— Fred Rogers
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