R Plot multiple series with par(new=T) - axis labels are overlaying each other, making the plot unreadable

Question

I'm plotting multiple data series.

colos=c('red','green','purple','pink','brown')
par(new=F)
for (i in 1:5)
{
  plot(dat[[i+1]],col=colos[i],cex=marksize,xlab='Reading #',ylab = 'Current')
  par(new=T)
}

My plot looks like this:

Is there a way I can overwrite the plot axis with each iteration, but not overwrite the plotted points?

Answer 1

You may want to use the lines or points function(s) instead. Here's an example of how I usually go about this problem. This way you only overlay points on top of the existing plot, instead of plotting one plot on top of another.

Plot the first one with your original plot call, then use lapply to overlay the other columns' points on top of that.

set.seed(1)
dat <- data.frame(replicate(5, sample(10)))
colos <- c('red','green','purple','pink','brown')
plot(dat[[1]], col = colos[1], xlab = 'Reading #',   
     ylab = 'Current', ylim = range(as.matrix(dat)))
invisible(lapply(2:ncol(dat), function(i) points(dat[[i]], col = colos[i])))

Answer 2

Turn off the axes using xaxt and yaxt

E.g.:

plot(1:10)
par(new=TRUE)
plot(1:10, rnorm(10), xaxt="n", yaxt="n", xlab="", ylab="", type="l")
axis(side=4)