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

[Tom Roche]

Tom Roche Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:43:05 -0500
>> 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).

ilai Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:34:34 -0700
> [Until] dev.off(), all plots will be sent to the open graphical
> device [which] usually doesn't impact behavior of other output

Doh! I totally missed that, and was having PDF problems for other
reasons. And thanks for the self-contained example (slightly extended
by me):

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

thanks again, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>