... and, of course, by() should not be used at all for this sort of thing in practice, as the "col" argument can be a vector. See ?plot.default if you you were not aware of this already.
j <- data.frame(x=c(1,2,3), y=c(1,1,1), B=c("red","blue","green"), stringsAsFactors = FALSE) with(j,plot(x,y, col=B, xlim=c(0,4), ylim=c(0,1.2))) Cheers, Bert Bert Gunter "The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along and sticking things into it." -- Opus (aka Berkeley Breathed in his "Bloom County" comic strip ) On Sat, Aug 5, 2017 at 2:59 AM, Myles English <mylesengl...@gmail.com> wrote: > > The answer was (thanks to Mark Leeds) to do with the use of a factor > instead of a vector. > > on [2017-08-05] at 08:57 Myles English writes: > >> I am having trouble understanding how the 'by' function works. Using >> this bit of code: >> >> i <- data.frame(x=c(1,2,3), y=c(0,0,0), B=c("red","blue","blue")) >> j <- data.frame(x=c(1,2,3), y=c(1,1,1), B=c('red','blue','green')) > > The use of I() prevents conversion to a factor: > > i <- data.frame(x=c(1,2,3), y=c(0,0,0), B=I(c("red","blue","blue"))) > j <- data.frame(x=c(1,2,3), y=c(1,1,1), B=I(c('red','blue','green'))) > >> plot(0, 0, type="n", xlim=c(0,4), ylim=c(0,1)) >> by(i, i$B, function(s){ points(s$x, s$y, col=s$B) }) >> by(j, j$B, function(s){ points(s$x, s$y, col=s$B) }) >> >> I would have expected the point at (1,1) to be coloured red. When >> plotted, this row is indeed red: >> >>> i[1,] >> x y B >> 1 1 0 red >> >> however, this next point is green on the plot even though I would like >> it to be red: >> >>> j[1,] >> x y B >> 1 1 1 red >> >> How can I achieve that? >> >> Myles > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > 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. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.