"plot.new has not been called yet" error in rmarkdown (Rstudio 1.0.44)

Question

I am using a recent version of Rstudio with an iMac

Version 1.0.44 – © 2009-2016 RStudio, Inc. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_1) AppleWebKit/602.2.14 (KHTML, like Gecko)

And I noticed the notebook function for rmarkdown files. When generating plots, the usual "Plots window" is not used any more, and the plots are generated just below the code chunk.

And I have an error for the following code:

plot(seq(1,10,1))
abline(a=0,b=1)

The error is showed below the code chunk :

Error in int_abline(a = a, b = b, h = h, v = v, untf = untf, ...) : plot.new has not been called yet

However, when knitting the whole rmarkdown file, there is no error.

So I would like to know how to avoid the error:

by using another code
by using the "Plots window"
or another way.

I cannot reproduce the error. Only if I put both commands in seperate chunks the error appears. — Martin Schmelzer, Dec 03 '16 at 12:06
I think that it is because I run the code line by line. When runing the entire R chunk in rmarkdown, I don't get errors. — John Smith, Sep 02 '17 at 10:42

score 37 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 31 '17 at 00:43

37

The following will work

{plot(seq(1,10,1))
 abline(a=0,b=1)}

edited Jan 31 '17 at 00:43

ρяσѕρєя K

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answered Jan 31 '17 at 00:34

user7492565

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Add some explanation with answer for how this answer help OP in fixing current issue – ρяσѕρєя K Jan 31 '17 at 00:43
I don't really get why it works either, but can verify that it does. Must have something to do with the Rstudio markdown environment. – wildintellect Jun 21 '17 at 18:11
4

Wrapping it in curly brackets ensures all lines are evaluated as one block. This answer, to an unrelated question, explains it nicely. https://stackoverflow.com/a/28758675/1454785 – spops Dec 03 '21 at 20:50

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 12 '17 at 21:31

8

In RStudio, there's a setting in Preferences -> R Markdown to "Show output inline for all R Markdown documents". To get rid of the error, make sure this is unchecked.

answered Dec 12 '17 at 21:31

Mike W

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score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 24 '17 at 16:25

5

This works too

plot(seq(1,10,1))+
abline(a=0,b=1)

answered Aug 24 '17 at 16:25

mindlessgreen

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 15 '18 at 08:41

2

In jupyter with R kernel, you will see that error if run the code line by line, just as XR SC mentioned.

answered Sep 15 '18 at 08:41

Augusto Diaz

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 09 '21 at 17:13

This was happening to me because I was adding an invalid parameter to my plot. In my case I was trying to execute:

ggplot(df, aes(x=sales)) + geom_histogram() + title('Plot Title')

And should have been executing:

ggplot(df, aes(x=sales)) + geom_histogram() + ggtitle('Plot Title')

Notice that you must use ggtitle, not title.

"plot.new has not been called yet" error in rmarkdown (Rstudio 1.0.44)

5 Answers5