[R] scaling axes when plotting multiple data sets

[Gabor Grothendieck]

Benjamin M. Osborne <Benjamin.Osborne <at> uvm.edu> writes:

: 
: 1) When adding additional data sets to a plot using "plot" followed 
by "lines",
: is there a way to automate the scaling of the axes to allow for all data sets
: to fit within the plot area?
: 
: 2) I attempted to solve this by setting
: xlim=c(min(c(data1,data2,data3)),max(c(data1,data2,data3)))
: however, there are some NAs and Infs in these data sets, and min(data1) and
: max(data1) both return NA, as with data2 and data3.  (These are time series).


Any of the following solutions would avoid having to calculate
maximum and minimum in the first place:

1. You can first plot all the data together using type = "n" (no points 
are actually shown) and then add them one by one 

plot(c(x1,x2), c(y1,y2), type = "n")
lines(x1, y1)
lines(x2, y2)

2. you may be able to use matplot.  See ?matplot .

3. if these are 'ts' class time series you could plot them all at once
using ts.plot even if they have different time bases.  See ?ts.plot

4. the 'zoo' library's plot function has facilities for plotting 
multiple time series all at once even if they have different time bases.
See    library(zoo); ?plot.zoo