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rbashplotsuppress-warnings

Suppressing "null device" output with R in batch mode

I have a number of bash scripts which invoke R scripts for plotting things. Something like: 

#!/bin/bash
R --vanilla --slave <<RSCRIPT
cat("Plotting $1 to $2\n")
input <- read.table("$1")
png("$2")
plot(as.numeric(input[1,]))
dev.off()
RSCRIPT

The problem is that despite --slave, the call to dev.off() prints the message null device 1. Once there are a lot of plots being done, or for more complex scripts which plot to a number of files, this gets to be a real hassle.

Is there some way to suppress this message?

Solution

  • One of the nice things about R is that you can view the source of many functions:

    > dev.off
function (which = dev.cur()) 
{
    if (which == 1) 
        stop("cannot shut down device 1 (the null device)")
    .Internal(dev.off(as.integer(which)))
    dev.cur()
}
<environment: namespace:grDevices>

    So it calls .Internal(dev.off(...)) and then returns dev.cur(), which I suppose would be useful if you have several devices open so you know which one became active. You could use .Internal(dev.off(as.integer(dev.cur()))) in your script, or even patch dev.off to only return the value of dev.cur() if it is something else than the null device, and send the patch to the maintainers of R.

    Also, graphics.off() calls dev.off() for all devices and doesn't return anything.