How to save a plot as image on the disk?

Question

I plot a simple linear regression using R. I would like to save that image as PNG or JPEG, is it possible to do it automatically? (via code)

There are two different

Answer 1

In some cases one wants to both save and print a base r plot. I spent a bit of time and came up with this utility function:

x = 1:10

basesave = function(expr, filename, print=T) {
  #extension
  exten = stringr::str_match(filename, "\\.(\\w+)$")[, 2]

  switch(exten,
         png = {
           png(filename)
           eval(expr, envir = parent.frame())
           dev.off()
         },
         {stop("filetype not recognized")})


  #print?
  if (print) eval(expr, envir = parent.frame())

  invisible(NULL)
}

#plots, but doesn't save
plot(x)

#saves, but doesn't plot
png("test.png")
plot(x)
dev.off()

#both
basesave(quote(plot(x)), "test.png")

#works with pipe too
quote(plot(x)) %>% basesave("test.png")

Note that one must use quote, otherwise the plot(x) call is run in the global environment and NULL gets passed to basesave().