CODEWITHSUNDEEP
r
jessica
jessica

Reputation: 1355

Plotting function in R

I have variables in dataframe and I am trying to build a function that allows me to plot a variable in a data without redudantly writing, data$variablename.

plt=function(x){
    plot(data$date,as.name(paste("data$",x,sep="")),type="l",xlab="Population",ylab="Time")
}

R keeps thinking that my y-variable is a name rather than a variable. How do I tell it that the y-axis input in the function plot is a name rather than the actual variable?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 116

Answers (1)

A5C1D2H2I1M1N2O1R2T1
A5C1D2H2I1M1N2O1R2T1

Reputation: 193507

I would try something like the following (two options provided--the uncommented one would be my preferred approach):

plt <- function(x, data = mydf) {
  x <- deparse(substitute(x))
# with(data, plot(date, get(x), type = "l", xlab = "Population", ylab = "Time"))
  plot(data[, "date"], data[, x], type = "l", xlab = "Population", ylab = "Time")
}

When using data[, x], x needs to be a character vector, hence the use of deparse(substitute(x)) in the first line of the function. Thus, you would enter the y column unquoted. I've also added a "data" argument to let you specify which dataset you are dealing with.

Try the function out with this:

set.seed(1)
mydf <- data.frame(date = 1:100, A = rnorm(100), B = rnorm(100), C = rnorm(100))

plt(A)
plt(B)
plt(C)

Upvotes: 2

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