Why hadn’t I written a function for that?

I’m often typing the same bits of code over and over. Those bits of code really should be made into functions.

For example, I’m still using base graphics. (ggplot2 is on my “to do” list, really!) Often some things will be drawn with a slight overlap of the border of the plotting region. And in heatmaps with image, the border is often obscured. I want a nice black rectangle around the outside.

So I’ll write the following:

u <- par("usr")
rect(u[1], u[3], u[2], u[4])

I don’t know how many times I’ve typed that! Today I realized that I should put those two lines in a function add_border(). And then I added add_border() to my R/broman package.

It was a bit more work adding the Roxygen2 comments for the documentation, but now I’ve got a proper function that is easier to use and much more clear.

Update: @tpoi pointed out that box() does the same thing as my add_border(). My general point still stands, and this raises the additional point: twitter + blog → education.

I want to add, “I’m an idiot” but I think I’ll just say that there’s always more that I can learn about R. And I’ll remove add_border from R/broman and just use box().