R plot without showing the graphic window

Question

I need to store a plot object in a variable. I know that I can do:

plot(rnorm(10))
obj = recordPlot()
replayPlot(obj)

But I don\'t want to

Answer 1

You can do that easily with ggplot2:

require(ggplot2)
data = data.frame(x = 1:100, y = rnorm(100))
p = ggplot(data) + geom_point(aes(x, y)) + theme_classic()
print(p) # this show the plot

Answer 2

From ?recordPlot:

The displaylist can be turned on and off using dev.control. 
Initially recording is on for screen devices, and off for print devices.

So you need to turn on the displaylist if you want to record a plot writing to file:

win.metafile()
dev.control('enable') # enable display list
plot(rnorm(10))
obj = recordPlot()
dev.off()
replayPlot(obj)