The R Project SVN R

% File src/library/graphics/man/plot.Rd

% Part of the R package, http://www.R-project.org

% Copyright 1995-2011 R Core Team

% Distributed under GPL 2 or later

\name{plot}

\title{Generic X-Y Plotting}

\alias{plot}

\description{

  Generic function for plotting of \R objects.  For more details about

  the graphical parameter arguments, see \code{\link{par}}.

  For simple scatter plots, \code{\link{plot.default}} will be used.

  However, there are \code{plot} methods for many \R objects,

  including \code{\link{function}}s, \code{\link{data.frame}}s,

  \code{\link{density}} objects, etc.  Use \code{methods(plot)} and

  the documentation for these.

}

\usage{

plot(x, y, \dots)

}

\arguments{

  \item{x}{the coordinates of points in the plot. Alternatively, a

      single plotting structure, function or \emph{any \R object with a

        \code{plot} method} can be provided.}

  \item{y}{the y coordinates of points in the plot, \emph{optional}

    if \code{x} is an appropriate structure.}

  \item{\dots}{Arguments to be passed to methods, such as

    \link{graphical parameters} (see \code{\link{par}}).

    Many methods will accept the following arguments:

    \describe{

    \item{\code{type}}{what type of plot should be drawn.  Possible types are

      \itemize{

        \item \code{"p"} for \bold{p}oints,

        \item \code{"l"} for \bold{l}ines,

        \item \code{"b"} for \bold{b}oth,

        \item \code{"c"} for the lines part alone of \code{"b"},

        \item \code{"o"} for both \sQuote{\bold{o}verplotted},

        \item \code{"h"} for \sQuote{\bold{h}istogram} like (or

        \sQuote{high-density}) vertical lines,

        \item \code{"s"} for stair \bold{s}teps,

        \item \code{"S"} for other \bold{s}teps, see \sQuote{Details} below,

        \item \code{"n"} for no plotting.

      }

      All other \code{type}s give a warning or an error; using, e.g.,

      \code{type = "punkte"} being equivalent to \code{type = "p"} for S

      compatibility.  Note that some methods,

      e.g. \code{\link{plot.factor}}, do not accept this.

    }

    \item{\code{main}}{an overall title for the plot: see \code{\link{title}}.}

    \item{\code{sub}}{a sub title for the plot: see \code{\link{title}}.}

    \item{\code{xlab}}{a title for the x axis: see \code{\link{title}}.}

    \item{\code{ylab}}{a title for the y axis: see \code{\link{title}}.}

    \item{\code{asp}}{the \eqn{y/x} aspect ratio,

      see \code{\link{plot.window}}.}

    }

  }

}

\details{

  The two step types differ in their x-y preference: Going from

  \eqn{(x1,y1)} to \eqn{(x2,y2)} with \eqn{x1 < x2}, \code{type = "s"}

  moves first horizontal, then vertical, whereas \code{type = "S"} moves

  the other way around.

}

\seealso{

  \code{\link{plot.default}}, \code{\link{plot.formula}} and other

  methods; \code{\link{points}}, \code{\link{lines}}, \code{\link{par}}.

  For X-Y-Z plotting see \code{\link{contour}}, \code{\link{persp}} and

  \code{\link{image}}.

}

\examples{

require(stats)

plot(cars)

lines(lowess(cars))

plot(sin, -pi, 2*pi) # see ?plot.function

## Discrete Distribution Plot:

plot(table(rpois(100, 5)), type = "h", col = "red", lwd = 10,

     main = "rpois(100, lambda = 5)")

## Simple quantiles/ECDF, see ecdf() {library(stats)} for a better one:

plot(x <- sort(rnorm(47)), type = "s", main = "plot(x, type = \"s\")")

points(x, cex = .5, col = "dark red")

}

\keyword{hplot}