R legend outside of graph not showing in pdf

Question

The following code is supposed to export the following graph (with a legend outside of the graph) to pdf. But the legend is not showing up in the resulting pdf. However, if I only run the code without the pdf line the legend shows up in the plot viewer in Rstudio.

pdf(paste("testgraph.pdf", sep=''), paper="a4r", width=10, height=10)

set.seed(1) # just to get the same random numbers

plot(1:30, rnorm(30), pch = 1, lty = 1, type = "o", ylim=c(-2,2), bty='L')

legend("topright", inset=c(-0.3,0),c("group A", "group B"), pch = c(1,2), lty = c(1,2))

dev.off()

Answer 1

Is this code helpful for you?

pdf(paste("testgraph.pdf", sep=''), paper="a4r", width=10, height=10)
set.seed(1) # just to get the same random numbers
plot(1:30, rnorm(30), pch = 1, lty = 1, type = "o", ylim=c(-2,2), bty='L')
legend("topright",c("group A", "group B"), pch = c(1,2),lty = c(1,2))
dev.off()

Answer 2

Set xpd = TRUE in legend() and get wider margins using par(mar = c(c(bottom, left, top, right) + 0.1)) . Position your legend using x and y coordinates.

pdf("testgraph.pdf", paper="a4r", width=10, height=10)

par(mar = c(c(5, 4, 4, 6) + 0.1))
set.seed(1) # just to get the same random numbers
plot(1:30, rnorm(30), pch = 1, lty = 1, type = "o", ylim=c(-2,2), bty='L')

legend(x = 31, y = 1, legend = c("group A", "group B"),
       pch = c(1,2), lty = c(1,2), xpd = TRUE)

dev.off()