Substitute not displaying text on plots

Question

I just recently learnt about plotmath and its ability to put mathematical expression in text on plots.

However I'm encountering some strange behaviour where the substitute function does not render any text.

Here's a simple case that should work (from this answer):

labNames <- c('xLab','yLab')
plot(c(1:10),
     xlab=substitute(paste(nn, x^2), list(nn=labNames[1])),
     ylab=substitute(paste(nn, y^2), list(nn=labNames[2])))

When I run this code snippet, there is no xlab or ylab text.

I'm running mac osx and R 3.0.0. This problem persists whether i output to Quartz or to a png file.

Here's my sessionInfo():

R version 3.0.0 (2013-04-03)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin12.3.0 (64-bit)

locale:
[1] en_AU.UTF-8/en_AU.UTF-8/en_AU.UTF-8/C/en_AU.UTF-8/en_AU.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

Problem persists when i use `bquote` as well. However i can get text to render using `plotmath` if I do not try to substitute any values in. — Scott Ritchie, Oct 14 '13 at 10:58
Works for me if I do `R --no-init-file` Currently tracking down the culprit in my `.Rprofile` — Scott Ritchie, Oct 14 '13 at 11:14

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 14 '13 at 11:19

I found the culprit: there was a weird interaction with an option in my .Rprofile

The following line causes the issue if i don't load the devtools package:

options(devtools.desc.author="'Scott Ritchie <sritchie73@gmail.com> [aut, cre]'")

Strangely, there doesn't seem to be an issue if i define other irrelevant options (options(notanoption=TRUE) caused no issues).

Substitute not displaying text on plots

1 Answers1