On 25 Jun 2008, at 19:45, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

Try this:

plot(1, xlab = ~ alpha / V * m^-3 * kg ^-2 * l^4)



Thanks, I would never have expected this code to work, this is a mystery to me! Actually, I thought xlab wanted an expression, but it seems to be happy with a formula. Also, the handling of exponents is cleverer than I naively assumed. I think an example like the one above would make a nice addition to the plotmath documentation.

One small thing bothers me: can one use a similar syntax and use something like bquote to substitute a variable?

say,

a <- " some text "

plot(1, xlab = ~ alpha *  `a` / V * m^-3 * kg ^-2 * l^4)

to produce,


plot(1, xlab = ~ alpha * " some text " / V * m^-3 * kg ^-2 * l^4)

but I can't get either bquote, deparse, substitute, "``" to produce the desired substitution in this formula.

Many thanks,

baptiste





On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 1:06 PM, baptiste Auguié <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
DeaR list,

I'm a bit lost in the behavior of substitute and co.
I often use fairly long axis labels in my graphs (long to write, that is). Typically, they would contain some greek letters and units with exponents,
as in:

xlab=expression(paste("text ", alpha, " / ", V,".", m^ {-3}, ".",
kg^{-2}, ".", l^{4}))


To make this a bit prettier, I've attempted to mimic the behavior of the
SIstyle latex package which defines a macro that cleverly parses an
expression for units, exponents, etc. My code fails in putting together the
unit, as seen in the example below:


makeUnits <- function(expr){ # formats the units

units.list <- strsplit(expr, "[[:blank:]]", perl=F)
expr.list <- strsplit(unlist(units.list), "\\^", perl=T)

units <- unlist(lapply(expr.list, function(unit) {
               if (length(unit) == 2)
paste(unit[1],"^{",unit[2],"}",sep="")
               else paste(unit,sep="")
               }))
       cat(units, sep=".")
}

expr <- "V m^-3 kg^-2 l^4"
makeUnits(expr) # this works, and produces:

# V.m^{-3}.kg^{-2}.l^{4}

silab <- function(..., units=NULL){ # creates a valid expression for xlab
and co.
       dotCalls <- substitute(list(...))
       nArgs <- length(dotCalls)
if (!is.null(units))    myUnits <- makeUnits(units)
if (!is.null(units)) return(substitute(paste(..., " / ",  myUnits)))
if (is.null(units)) return(substitute(paste(...)))
}

silab("text", alpha,  units = "V m^-3 kg^-2 l^4") # the result is
obviously not what I want

par(mfrow=c(2, 1)) # comparison of the desired output and the current one
plot(1:10, 1:10,
       xlab=silab("text ", alpha, units = "V m^-3 kg^-2 l^4"),
       ylab=silab("simple text"))

plot(1:10, 1:10,
xlab=expression(paste("text ", alpha, " / ", V,".", m^ {-3}, ".",
kg^{-2}, ".", l^{4})),
       ylab="simple text")




Any thoughts welcome!

Sincerely,

baptiste

_____________________________

Baptiste Auguié

Physics Department
University of Exeter
Stocker Road,
Exeter, Devon,
EX4 4QL, UK

Phone: +44 1392 264187

http://newton.ex.ac.uk/research/emag
http://projects.ex.ac.uk/atto

______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting- guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.


_____________________________

Baptiste Auguié

Physics Department
University of Exeter
Stocker Road,
Exeter, Devon,
EX4 4QL, UK

Phone: +44 1392 264187

http://newton.ex.ac.uk/research/emag
http://projects.ex.ac.uk/atto

______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

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