Yes, I did get a very helpful reply from Marc Schwartz. I have had substitute() working in legend(), when the legend argument has length one. The challenge was to find some way to do the equivalent of substitute() when several expressions appear in parallel, as may be required for legend().
The trick is to use bquote() to do the substitution. The resulting quoted expression (of mode "call") can then be an element in a list, along with other quoted (or bquoted) expressions. The list elements, when passed to expression() via the args argument of do.call(), become unquoted expressions. Note that bquote() uses a syntax for the substitution of variables that is different from that used by substitute(). It would be useful to include some such example as below on the help page for bquote(): library(DAAG) Acmena <- subset(rainforest, species="Acmena") plot(wood~dbh, data=Acmena) Acmena.lm <- lm(log(wood) ~ log(dbh), data=Acmena) b <- round(coef(Acmena.lm), 3) arg1 <- bquote(italic(y) == .(A) * italic(x)^.(B), list(A=b[1], B=b[2])) arg2 <- quote("where " * italic(y) * "=wood; " * italic(x) * "=dbh") legend("topleft", legend=do.call("expression", c(arg1, arg2)), bty="n") John Maindonald. On 11 Oct 2005, at 11:41 AM, Spencer Graves wrote: > Have you received a reply to this post? I couldn't find one, > and I couldn't find a solution, even though one must exist. I can > get the substitute to work in "main" but not "legend": > > B <- 2:3 > eB <- substitute(y==a*x^b, list(a=B[1], b=B[2])) > plot(1:2, 1:2, main=eB) > > You should be able to construct it using "mtext", but I > couldn't get the desired result using legend. > > hope this helps. > spencer graves > > John Maindonald wrote: > > > >> expression() accepts multiple expressions as arguments, thus: >> plot(1:2, 1:2) >> legend("topleft", >> expression(y == a * x^b, >> "where "* paste(y=="wood; ", >> x=="dbh"))) >> Is there a way to do this when values are to be substituted >> for a and b? i.e., the first element of the legend argument >> to legend() becomes, effectively: >> substitute(y == a * x^b, list(a = B[1], b=B[2])) >> John Maindonald email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> phone : +61 2 (6125)3473 fax : +61 2(6125)5549 >> Centre for Bioinformation Science, Room 1194, >> John Dedman Mathematical Sciences Building (Building 27) >> Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200. >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >> PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting- >> guide.html >> >> > > -- > Spencer Graves, PhD > Senior Development Engineer > PDF Solutions, Inc. > 333 West San Carlos Street Suite 700 > San Jose, CA 95110, USA > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.pdf.com <http://www.pdf.com> > Tel: 408-938-4420 > Fax: 408-280-7915 > > John Maindonald email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone : +61 2 (6125)3473 fax : +61 2(6125)5549 Centre for Bioinformation Science, Room 1194, John Dedman Mathematical Sciences Building (Building 27) Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200. ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html