Remove space between plotted data and the axes

ggplot2, plot, r

Solution

Update: See @divibisan's answer for further possibilities in the latest versions of ggplot2.

From `?scale_x_continuous` about the `expand`-argument:

Vector of range expansion constants used to add some padding around the data, to ensure that they are placed some distance away from the axes. The defaults are to expand the scale by 5% on each side for continuous variables, and by 0.6 units on each side for discrete variables.

The problem is thus solved by adding `expand = c(0,0)` to `scale_x_continuous` and `scale_y_continuous`. This also removes the need for adding the `panel.margin` parameter.

The code:

ggplot(data = uniq) + 
  geom_area(aes(x = year, y = uniq.p, fill = uniq.loc), stat = "identity", position = "stack") +
  scale_x_continuous(limits = c(1986,2014), expand = c(0, 0)) +
  scale_y_continuous(limits = c(0,101), expand = c(0, 0)) +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(panel.grid = element_blank(),
        panel.border = element_blank())

The result:

Problem

I have the following dataframe: ``` uniq <- structure(list(year = c(1986L, 1987L, 1991L, 1992L, 1993L, 1994L, 1995L, 1996L, 1997L, 1998L, 1999L, 2000L, 2001L, 2002L, 2003L, 2004L, 2005L, 2006L, 2007L, 2008L, 2009L, 2010L, 2011L, 2012L, 2013L, 2014L, 1986L, 1987L, 1991L, 1992L, 1993L, 1994L, 1995L, 1996L, 1997L, 1998L, 1999L, 2000L, 2001L, 2002L, 2003L, 2004L, 2005L, 2006L, 2007L, 2008L, 2009L, 2010L, 2011L, 2012L, 2013L, 2014L, 1986L, 1987L, 1991L, 1992L, 1993L, 1994L, 1995L, 1996L, 1997L, 1998L, 1999L, 2000L, 2001L, 2002L, 2003L, 2004L, 2005L, 2006L, 2007L, 2008L, 2009L, 2010L, 2011L, 2012L, 2013L, 2014L), uniq.loc = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L), .Label = c("u.1", "u.2", "u.3"), class = "factor"), uniq.n = c(1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 4, 2, 16, 16, 10, 15, 14, 8, 12, 20, 11, 17, 30, 17, 21, 22, 19, 34, 44, 56, 11, 0, 0, 3, 3, 7, 17, 12, 21, 18, 10, 12, 9, 7, 11, 25, 14, 11, 17, 12, 24, 59, 17, 36, 50, 59, 12, 0, 0, 0, 1, 4, 6, 3, 3, 9, 3, 4, 2, 5, 2, 12, 6, 8, 8, 3, 2, 9, 5, 20, 7, 10, 8), uniq.p = c(100, 100, 25, 33.3, 31.2, 14.8, 11.8, 40, 37.2, 43.5, 48.4, 56, 40, 48, 35.1, 35.5, 47.2, 54.5, 53.1, 44.7, 24.4, 46.3, 37.8, 43.6, 44.8, 35.5, 0, 0, 75, 50, 43.8, 63, 70.6, 52.5, 41.9, 43.5, 38.7, 36, 35, 44, 43.9, 45.2, 30.6, 30.9, 37.5, 51.1, 65.6, 41.5, 40, 49.5, 47.2, 38.7, 0, 0, 0, 16.7, 25, 22.2, 17.6, 7.5, 20.9, 13, 12.9, 8, 25, 8, 21.1, 19.4, 22.2, 14.5, 9.4, 4.3, 10, 12.2, 22.2, 6.9, 8, 25.8)), .Names = c("year", "uniq.loc", "uniq.n", "uniq.p"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -78L)) ``` When I make an area-plot with: ``` ggplot(data = uniq) + geom_area(aes(x = year, y = uniq.p, fill = uniq.loc), stat = "identity", position = "stack") + scale_x_continuous(limits=c(1986,2014)) + scale_y_continuous(limits=c(0,101)) + theme_bw() ``` I get this result: However, I want to remove the space between the axis and the actual plot. When I add `theme(panel.grid = element_blank(), panel.margin = unit(-0.8, "lines"))` I get the following error message: ``` Error in theme(panel.grid = element_blank(), panel.margin = unit(-0.8, : could not find function "unit" ``` Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?

Original source