R Barplot with one bar - how to plot correctly

Question

I want to plot a regular bar plot in R, but with just one bar. What I don\'t like is the fact that the bar width gets to be the width of the whole plot. I want the bar to be \"t

Answer 1

The width argument to barplot says:

width optional vector of bar widths. Re-cycled to length the number of bars drawn. Specifying a single value will have no visible effect unless xlim is specified.

So specify both width and xlim. The interaction of these two is not obvious (to me) so you will probably need to play around with them until they look like you want them to.

percentage <- 0.25
barplot(percentage, width=0.2, xlim=c(0,1.2), col="brown4")

Answer 2

You may try to play around with the width of the device you plotting to. E.g.:

# plot to a Windows graphic device
windows(height = 10, width = 4)
barplot(0.5)

# plot to PDF
pdf(height = 10, width = 2)
barplot(0.5)
dev.off()

You may also try width together with xlim

barplot(0.5, width = 0.1, xlim = c(0, 1))