R, ggplot2, skip printing x values

Question

This might be fairly simple but yet i cant seem to find out how to do it. I got a nice plot with a group of lines of values in it. The y represents an amount, the x represents dates.

The problem is simple, there so many dates that they are printed on top of each other.

The problem

The code :

sp = rbind(sp1,sp2,sp3,sp4)
pm = ggplot(data = sp, aes(x = date, 
                                 y = amount, 
                                 colour=sm, 
                                 group=sm)) + 
        geom_line()

How can I make the x axis only print for example every 5 dates instead of all of them? Thanks in advance!

Have you considered using theme to make them diagonal? In any case, you're probably looking for the breaks argument in scale_x_continuous or scale_x_datetime. — sebastian-c
– sebastian-c, Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 22:32
I agree with @sebastian-c, if you make the scale datetime, ggplot will find nice breaks for you. — Roman Luštrik
– Roman Luštrik, Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 22:36
This, this or even this post should give you an idea.. — Arun
– Arun, Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 22:42
Implicit in the suggestion to use a datetime scale is to convert sp$date into a Date object. — Brian Diggs
– Brian Diggs, Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 22:48

OliE · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-10 12:15:17Z

3

library(scales)

sp = rbind(sp1,sp2,sp3,sp4)
pm = ggplot(data = sp, aes(x = date, y = amount, colour=sm, group=sm)) + 
    geom_line() +
    scale_x_date("x axis title", breaks = "5 years")

scale_x_date will sort out the x axis labels for you. To specify the label intervals use the scales packages as above. (p.s your dates need to be of class Date, POSIXct or POSIXlt)

answered Apr 10, 2013 at 12:15

OliE

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1 Comment

Patrick Aleman Over a year ago

Thanks for the reply, it works. But i already found it out :) Thanks anyway

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