plot2script: Create a script from the current plot
In TeachingDemos: Demonstrations for Teaching and Learning

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Note Author(s) See Also Examples

This function attempts to create a script that will recreate the current plot (in the graphics window). You can then edit any parts of the script that you want changed and rerun to get the modified plot.

1	plot2script(file='clipboard')

file

The filename (the clipboard by default) for the script to create or append to.

This function works with the graphics window and mainly traditional graphics (it may work with lattice or other graphics, but has not really been tested with those).

This function creates a script file (or puts it on the clipboard so that you can past into a script window or text editor) that will recreate the current graph in the current graph window. The script consists of very low level functions (calls to plot.window and axis rather than letting plot handle all this).

If you want the higher level functions that were actually used, then use the history or savehistory commands (this will probably be the better method for most cases).

Some of the low level plotting functions use different arguments to the internal version than the user callable version (box for example), the arguments to these functions may need to be editted before the full script will run correctly.

The lengths of command lines between the creation of the script and what can be run in R do not always match, you may need to manually wrap long lines in the script before it will run properly.

This function is run for its side effects and does not return anything meaningful.

For any serious projects it is best to put your code into a script to begin with and edit the original script rather than using this function.

This function depends on the recordPlot function which can change in any version. Therefore this function should not be considered stable.

Greg Snow 538280@gmail.com

history, savehistory, recordPlot, source

if(interactive()){

# create a plot
plot(runif(10),rnorm(10))
lines( seq(0,1,length=10), rnorm(10,1,3) )

# create the script
plot2script()

# now paste the script into a script window or text processor.
# edit the ranges in plot.window() and change some colors or
# other options.  Then run the script.
 }