Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Gavin Simpson wrote:


Dear List,

I need to add a subscript and a superscript to some of the ions in the labels on some plots.

I have got to here but now I'm stuck:

plot(1:10, xlab = expression(paste("nm SO"[4], " ", mu, "eq cm"^{-2}, " yr"^{-1})))

Which gives almost what I require. No matter what I tried, however, I could not get bot a sub script *and* a superscript attached to the SO in the label.

In LaTeX I would just do $SO_4^{2-}$ but taking that to R produces a syntax error:

plot(1:10, xlab = expression(paste("nm SO"[4]^{2-}, " ", mu, "eq cm"^{-2}, " yr"^{-1})))


The problem is 2-.  That's not an R expression.  Using "2-" might give
what you want, but it will use a hyphen rather than a minus. Otherwise

plot(1:10, xlab = expression(paste("nm SO"[4]^{2-phantom()})))

will give a minus.


Many thanks to Brian Ripley and Bendix Carstensen for your replies.

Both of the above options produce what I was after. One quick follow-up question regarding the use of phantom(). Looking at ?plotmath phantom leaves space for a character passed as an argument to phantom(), but does not plot it.

In the example above we are leaving space for "nothing". I don't understand why this is a valid R expression. I guess phantom() is returning something that makes 2-<returned_val> a valid expression, but I couldn't find the help for ?phantom so I couldn't check on this in the documentation.

Also as an aside, phantom() appears, visually, to be a function, but it is not visible to the user as a function. i.e. typing phantom at the prompt yields: Error: Object "phantom" not found. getAnywhere(phantom) yields nothing either. What is phantom() in R parlance?

All the best,

Gavin

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Gavin Simpson                     [T] +44 (0)20 7679 5522
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