`pivot_wider(values_fill` requires `is_scalar()`, which is not nescesaily accessible by default

[KasperThystrup]

The issue

Transforming a data from long to wide and replacing NA with e.g. 0 (or "0") using pivot_wider() yields the following err:

Error in is_scalar(values_fill) : could not find function "is_scalar"

I'm uncertain which R package to use for providing is_scalar, it doesn't seem to be an integrated part of the tidyr exports.

Reprex

a <- dplyr::tibble(year = 2015:2020, feat = c("Good year", "Wierd year", "Funny year", "What happens in LA...", "Crappy year", "We're doomed!"), count = sample(x = 1:10, size = 6, replace = T))

tidyr::pivot_wider(a, names_from = year, values_from = count, values_fill = 0)

Traceback

3 pivot_wider_spec(data = data, spec = spec, id_cols = !!id_cols, id_expand = id_expand, names_repair = names_repair, values_fill = values_fill, values_fn = values_fn, unused_fn = unused_fn, error_call = current_env())
2 pivot_wider.data.frame(a, names_from = year, values_from = count, values_fill = 0)
1 tidyr::pivot_wider(a, names_from = year, values_from = count, values_fill = 0)

Info

sessionInfo()

R version 4.3.1 (2023-06-16 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19045)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_Denmark.utf8 LC_CTYPE=English_Denmark.utf8
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_Denmark.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_Denmark.utf8

time zone: Europe/Copenhagen
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] gtable_0.3.5 xfun_0.40 ggplot2_3.5.0 remotes_2.4.2.1
[5] htmlwidgets_1.6.4 devtools_2.4.5 tzdb_0.4.0 vctrs_0.6.3
[9] tools_4.3.1 generics_0.1.3 parallel_4.3.1 tibble_3.2.1
[13] fansi_1.0.4 pkgconfig_2.0.3 RColorBrewer_1.1-3 readxl_1.4.3
[17] lifecycle_1.0.4 compiler_4.3.1 farver_2.1.2 stringr_1.5.1
[21] textshaping_0.3.6 munsell_0.5.1 argparser_0.7.2 janitor_2.2.0
[25] snakecase_0.11.1 httpuv_1.6.15 usethis_2.2.2 htmltools_0.5.8.1
[29] yaml_2.3.7 urlchecker_1.0.1 later_1.3.2 pillar_1.9.0
[33] crayon_1.5.3 tidyr_1.3.0 ellipsis_0.3.2 cachem_1.1.0
[37] sessioninfo_1.2.2 mime_0.12 commonmark_1.9.1 tidyselect_1.2.0
[41] digest_0.6.36 stringi_1.7.12 dplyr_1.1.3 purrr_1.0.2
[45] labeling_0.4.3 fastmap_1.2.0 grid_4.3.1 colorspace_2.1-0
[49] cli_3.6.1 logger_0.3.0 magrittr_2.0.3 pkgbuild_1.4.4
[53] utf8_1.2.3 readr_2.1.4 withr_3.0.0 promises_1.3.0
[57] scales_1.3.0 bit64_4.0.5 lubridate_1.9.3 timechange_0.2.0
[61] bit_4.0.5 ggtext_0.1.2 cellranger_1.1.0 ragg_1.3.2
[65] hms_1.1.3 memoise_2.0.1 shiny_1.7.5.1 miniUI_0.1.1.1
[69] markdown_1.13 profvis_0.3.8 rlang_1.1.1 gridtext_0.1.5
[73] Rcpp_1.0.11 xtable_1.8-4 glue_1.6.2 xml2_1.3.5
[77] pkgload_1.4.0 svglite_2.1.2 rstudioapi_0.15.0 vroom_1.6.3
[81] R6_2.5.1 systemfonts_1.0.4 fs_1.6.4

[DavisVaughan]

Something is somehow broken for you, it works for me. I'd recommend uninstalling tidyr, restarting R, reinstalling tidyr, and trying again.

a <- dplyr::tibble(
  year = 2015:2020,
  feat = c(
    "Good year",
    "Wierd year",
    "Funny year",
    "What happens in LA...",
    "Crappy year",
    "We're doomed!"
  ),
  count = sample(x = 1:10, size = 6, replace = T)
)

tidyr::pivot_wider(a, names_from = year, values_from = count, values_fill = 0)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 7
#>   feat                  `2015` `2016` `2017` `2018` `2019` `2020`
#>   <chr>                  <int>  <int>  <int>  <int>  <int>  <int>
#> 1 Good year                  4      0      0      0      0      0
#> 2 Wierd year                 0     10      0      0      0      0
#> 3 Funny year                 0      0      5      0      0      0
#> 4 What happens in LA...      0      0      0     10      0      0
#> 5 Crappy year                0      0      0      0      8      0
#> 6 We're doomed!              0      0      0      0      0      3

^{Created on 2025-06-11 with reprex v2.1.1}