[R] [newbie] separating plot output from debug output

[ilai]

If you don't dev.off(), all plots will be sent to the open graphical
device. That usually doesn't impact behavior of other output types:

pdf(file='fooout.pdf')
hist(x <- rnorm(100))
y <- sin(x)
print(str(y))
cat(y,file='fooout.txt')
plot(x,y)
dev.off()

Hope this helps

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 3:43 PM, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> I'm attempting to refactor an R script that does a lot of plotting,
> among other things. Ideally I'd like to do something like
>
> setup     # does pdf(...)
> for each part of input {
>  plot(process(part))
> }
> cleanup   # does dev.off()
>
> but have problems:
>
> 1 I'm plotting to PDF, so everytime I dev.off() creates a new file,
>  and I want everything in one file (as does my boss :-)

> 2 I'm doing the work on a cluster, where I very much do not have root,
>  and which has a fairly minimal set of installed packages, so I can't
>  just call something external like 'pdftk' to merge the PDFs as I go.
>
> 3 As part of the processing, I printf status and debug messages, which
>  I don't want in my PDF(s).
>
> The solutions I can imagine are
>
> 1 Append to a single PDF, but I understand this is not feasible, no?
>
> 2 Create a buncha PDFs with code above, download them to my laptop,
>  merge them to a single PDF, upload it. Feasible but annoying and
>  kludgey.
>
> 3 Separate processing from plotting, e.g.,
>
> setup     # but not pdf(...)
> for each part of input {
>  write(process1(part), intermediate)
> }
> pdf(...)
> for each part of intermediate {
>  plot(process2(part))
> }
> cleanup   # does dev.off()
>
>  Again, feasible but kludgey.
>
> 4 No status and debug messages. I hope to be that good someday :-)
>
> Am I missing something? Are there clean solutions to this problem?
>
> TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>
>
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