abline {graphics}

Add Straight Lines to a Plot

Description

This function adds one or more straight lines through the current plot.

Usage

abline(a = NULL, b = NULL, h = NULL, v = NULL, reg = NULL,
       coef = NULL, untf = FALSE, ...)

Arguments

a, b

the intercept and slope, single values.

untf

logical asking whether to untransform. See ‘Details’.

h

the y-value(s) for horizontal line(s).

v

the x-value(s) for vertical line(s).

coef

a vector of length two giving the intercept and slope.

reg

an object with a coef method. See ‘Details’.

...

graphical parameters such as col, lty and lwd (possibly as vectors: see ‘Details’) and xpd and the line characteristics lend, ljoin and lmitre.

Details

Typical usages are

abline(a, b, ...)
abline(h =, ...)
abline(v =, ...)
abline(coef =, ...)
abline(reg =, ...)

The first form specifies the line in intercept/slope form (alternatively a can be specified on its own and is taken to contain the slope and intercept in vector form).

The h= and v= forms draw horizontal and vertical lines at the specified coordinates.

The coef form specifies the line by a vector containing the slope and intercept.

reg is a regression object with a coef method. If this returns a vector of length 1 then the value is taken to be the slope of a line through the origin, otherwise, the first 2 values are taken to be the intercept and slope.

If untf is true, and one or both axes are log-transformed, then a curve is drawn corresponding to a line in original coordinates, otherwise a line is drawn in the transformed coordinate system. The h and v parameters always refer to original coordinates.

The graphical parameters col, lty and lwd can be specified; see par for details. For the h= and v= usages they can be vectors of length greater than one, recycled as necessary.

Specifying an xpd argument for clipping overrides the global par("xpd") setting used otherwise.

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

Murrell, P. (2005) R Graphics. Chapman & Hall/CRC Press.

See Also

lines and segments for connected and arbitrary lines given by their endpoints. par.

Examples

## Setup up coordinate system (with x == y aspect ratio):
plot(c(-2,3), c(-1,5), type = "n", xlab = "x", ylab = "y", asp = 1)
## the x- and y-axis, and an integer grid
abline(h = 0, v = 0, col = "gray60")
text(1,0, "abline( h = 0 )", col = "gray60", adj = c(0, -.1))
abline(h = -1:5, v = -2:3, col = "lightgray", lty = 3)
abline(a = 1, b = 2, col = 2)
text(1,3, "abline( 1, 2 )", col = 2, adj = c(-.1, -.1))

## Simple Regression Lines:
require(stats)
sale5 <- c(6, 4, 9, 7, 6, 12, 8, 10, 9, 13)
plot(sale5)
abline(lsfit(1:10, sale5))
abline(lsfit(1:10, sale5, intercept = FALSE), col = 4) # less fitting

z <- lm(dist ~ speed, data = cars)
plot(cars)
abline(z) # equivalent to abline(reg = z) or
abline(coef = coef(z))

## trivial intercept model
abline(mC <- lm(dist ~ 1, data = cars)) ## the same as
abline(a = coef(mC), b = 0, col = "blue")