[R] custom tick mark labels on bwplot

[Scot W McNary]

Hi,

I could use some help figuring out how to make some more useful tickmark
labels in a set of box and whisker plots I've made.  I'm really happy with
the bwplot code I'm using (borrowed heavily from examples) as it gives me
three sets of boxplots for each group (sourcedx) across seven variables
(X.NAME) all on the same page.  The problem is, I'd like to label the sets
of tickmarks with something less cumbersome than the original variable
labels (X.LABEL).

I've been playing around with strsplit:

lab1<-unlist(strsplit(milk$X.LABEL, "-"))

to try to get the label to pull off the part of X.LABEL before the

"- times/month" or "- times/mo"

that appears in each label.  That should give me a shorter but still
sufficiently descriptive label.

However, I can't seem to figure out how to get just that first part, since
what I end up with is a list:

[1] "Chocolate milk and hot cocoa "  " times/mo"
"Milk to drink or on cereal "
[4] " times/month"                   "Yogurt and frozen yogurt "      "
times/month"
[7] "Ice cream,ice milk,milkshakes "

Do I then figure out how to pick elements out of the list, or is there a
better way to trim a character variable?



My dataset (milk) looks like this:

     id X.NAME.                                 X.LABEL. amt1 sourcedx
nh10000  HAN1AS  Chocolate milk and hot cocoa - times/mo    0.00 NHANE
nh10000  HAN1BS Milk to drink or on cereal - times/month   30.00 NHANE
nh10000  HAN1ES   Yogurt and frozen yogurt - times/month    0.00 NHANE
nh10000  HAN1FS Ice cream,ice milk,milkshakes - times/mo    4.00 NHANE
nh10000  HAN1GS          Cheese, all types - times/month   17.00 NHANE
nh10000  HAN1HS    Pizza, calzone, lasagna - times/month    0.00 NHANE
nh10000  HAN1IS              Cheese dishes - times/month    3.00 NHANE
sp60048  HAN1AS  Chocolate milk and hot cocoa - times/mo    0.00 SOCOp
sp60048  HAN1BS Milk to drink or on cereal - times/month   30.40 SOCOp
sp60048  HAN1ES   Yogurt and frozen yogurt - times/month    0.00 SOCOp
sp60048  HAN1FS Ice cream,ice milk,milkshakes - times/mo    2.00 SOCOp
sp60048  HAN1GS          Cheese, all types - times/month   30.40 SOCOp
sp60048  HAN1HS    Pizza, calzone, lasagna - times/month    2.00 SOCOp
sp60048  HAN1IS              Cheese dishes - times/month    1.00 SOCOp
sa30007  HAN1AS  Chocolate milk and hot cocoa - times/mo   12.90 SOCOa
sa30007  HAN1BS Milk to drink or on cereal - times/month   60.80 SOCOa
sa30007  HAN1ES   Yogurt and frozen yogurt - times/month    NA   SOCOa
sa30007  HAN1FS Ice cream,ice milk,milkshakes - times/mo   30.40 SOCOa
sa30007  HAN1GS          Cheese, all types - times/month    0.00 SOCOa
sa30007  HAN1HS    Pizza, calzone, lasagna - times/month    0.00 SOCOa
sa30007  HAN1IS              Cheese dishes - times/month    4.00 SOCOa
sa30009  HAN1AS  Chocolate milk and hot cocoa - times/mo    0.00 SOCOa

Thanks,

Scot



--
  Scot W. McNary  email:smcnary at charm.net


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