[R] Multiple use of par()

[Dieter Menne]

Hesen Peng-2 wrote:
> 
> I created a plot function which used par(mfcol=c(2,1)) so that I could
> have two plots together using just one command.
> 
> For exampe:
> 
> plot.foo <- function(data){
>  par(mfcol=c(2,1))
>  hist(data)
>  plot(data)
> }
> 
> Later I wanted to show 4 of these foo objects in the same picture. So
> I used par(mfcol=c(2,2)) again at the beginning of the code like:
> 
> par(mfcol=c(2,2))
> plot(foo.1)
> plot(foo.2)
> plot(foo.3)
> plot(foo.4)
> 
> but this time the par() command inside of the functions seem to be
> overwriting the par() command at the very begining. Can anyone please
> give me some advise on dealing with this? I guess that I may either
> need to change the way I plot foo, e.g. using some function rather
> than par(), or use some parameters at the beginning. Thank you very
> much,
> 

Your example starts fine, but does not run because is it unclear what foo.1
etc. means. Please really post complete examples, chances are higher you get
a reasonable answer.

Reading between the lines, I suspect that you mixed up the concepts of
trellis plots with those of standard plot(). I think you believed that your
function returns the plot object, which is approximately true for trellis
where you could use a list of graphics objects and print() or plot() these
later in a given arrangement with split().

As an easy solution with standard graphics, I suggest the not-so-elegant one
below. You should probably adjust the margins a bit to make clear that
graphs are pairs.

Dieter

data = rnorm(100)
plot.foo <- function(data){
# par(mfcol=c(2,1))
 hist(data)
 plot(data)
}


par(mfcol=c(4,2))
plot.foo(data)
plot.foo(data) # Use other data here
plot.foo(data)
plot.foo(data)


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