Plotting list of functions using for loop in R-CodePudding

How can you plot a list of functions in one graph using a for loop in R? The following code does the trick, but requires a separate call of plot for the first function outside of the for loop, which is very clunky. Is there a way to handle all the plotting inside the for loop without creating multiple plots?

vec <- 1:10
funcs <- lapply(vec, function(base){function(exponent){base^exponent}})

x_vals <- seq(0, 10, length.out=100)
plot(x_vals, funcs[[1]](x_vals), type="l", ylim=c(0,100))
for (i in 2:length(vec)) {
  lines(x_vals, funcs[[i]](x_vals))
}

CodePudding user response：

You can also do the computations first and plotting after, like this:

vec <- 1:10
funcs <- lapply(vec, function(base) function(exponent){base^exponent})

x_vals <- seq(0, 10, length.out=100)
y_vals <- sapply(funcs, \(f) f(x_vals))
plot(1, xlim=range(x_vals), ylim=range(y_vals), type='n', log='y', 
     xlab='x', ylab='y')
apply(y_vals, 2, lines, x=x_vals)

This way you know the range of your y values before initiating the plot and can set the y axis limits accordingly (if you would want that). Note that I chose to use logarithmic y axis here.

CodePudding user response：

Based on MrFlick's comment, it looks like something like this would be one way to do what I'm looking for, but is still not great.

vec <- 1:10
funcs <- lapply(vec, function(base){function(exponent){base^exponent}})

x_vals <- seq(0, 10, length.out=100)
plot(NULL, xlim=c(0,10), ylim=c(0,100))
for (i in 1:length(vec)) {
  lines(x_vals, funcs[[i]](x_vals))
}