facet_col() not working

[dominicroye]

I get an $ operator invalid error for facet_col(). Here is the example from the facet_col() function help.

ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_point(aes(disp, mpg)) +
  facet_col(~gear)
# Error en space$x: $ operator is invalid for atomic vectors

> sessionInfo()
R version 4.4.2 (2024-10-31 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64
Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 26100)

Matrix products: default


locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=Spanish_Spain.utf8  LC_CTYPE=Spanish_Spain.utf8    LC_MONETARY=Spanish_Spain.utf8
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                   LC_TIME=Spanish_Spain.utf8    

time zone: Europe/Madrid
tzcode source: internal

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

other attached packages:
 [1] ggforce_0.5.0      scales_1.3.0       ggstance_0.3.7     cowplot_1.1.3      patchwork_1.3.0   
 [6] ggtext_0.1.2       ggthemes_5.1.0     rmapshaper_0.5.0   classInt_0.4-10    lubridate_1.9.3   
[11] forcats_1.0.0      stringr_1.5.1      dplyr_1.1.4        purrr_1.0.2        readr_2.1.5       
[16] tidyr_1.3.1        tibble_3.2.1       ggplot2_3.5.1.9000 tidyverse_2.0.0    giscoR_0.6.0      
[21] sf_1.0-19         

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] gtable_0.3.6       lattice_0.22-6     tzdb_0.4.0         pak_0.8.0          vctrs_0.6.5       
 [6] tools_4.4.2        generics_0.1.3     curl_6.0.1         proxy_0.4-27       fansi_1.0.6       
[11] R.oo_1.27.0        pkgconfig_2.0.3    KernSmooth_2.23-24 RColorBrewer_1.1-3 R.cache_0.16.0    
[16] lifecycle_1.0.4    compiler_4.4.2     farver_2.1.2       textshaping_0.4.0  munsell_0.5.1     
[21] class_7.3-22       pillar_1.9.0       crayon_1.5.3       MASS_7.3-61        R.utils_2.12.3    
[26] wk_0.9.4           styler_1.10.3      digest_0.6.37      tidyselect_1.2.1   stringi_1.8.4     
[31] labeling_0.4.3     polyclip_1.10-7    grid_4.4.2         colorspace_2.1-1   cli_3.6.3         
[36] magrittr_2.0.3     utf8_1.2.4         e1071_1.7-16       withr_3.0.2        rappdirs_0.3.3    
[41] sp_2.1-4           timechange_0.3.0   R.methodsS3_1.8.2  ragg_1.3.3         hms_1.1.3         
[46] V8_6.0.0           s2_1.1.7           rlang_1.1.4        gridtext_0.1.5     Rcpp_1.0.13-1     
[51] glue_1.8.0         DBI_1.2.3          tweenr_2.0.3       geojsonsf_2.0.3    xml2_1.3.6        
[56] pkgload_1.4.0      rstudioapi_0.17.1  jsonlite_1.8.9     R6_2.5.1           systemfonts_1.1.0 
[61] units_0.8-5  

[teunbrand]

Probably due to development version of ggplot2.
facet_wrap(scales = "free", space = "free_y") provides similar functionality to facet_col().

[dominicroye]

facet_wrap() doesn't have a space argument ;-)

[teunbrand]

It does in the current dev version :)
Not sure how recent the ggplot2_3.5.1.9000 from your session info is, but this is a reprex with a recent-ish ggplot2 dev version.

library(ggplot2)
packageVersion("ggplot2")
#> [1] '3.5.1.9000'

ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_point(aes(disp, mpg)) +
  facet_wrap(~gear, scales = "free", space = "free_y")

^{Created on 2024-11-27 with reprex v2.1.1}

[dominicroye]

ohhh this is new!! Thanks I will have a look

[teunbrand]

It seems to work now with recent versions of ggforce and ggplot2

library(ggforce)
#> Loading required package: ggplot2

ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_point(aes(disp, mpg)) +
  facet_col(~gear)

^{Created on 2025-10-09 with reprex v2.1.1}