how to set x-axis limits in ggplot2 R plots?

Question

Say I plot the following in R:

library(ggplot2)    
carrots <- data.frame(length = rnorm(500000, 10000, 10000))
cukes <- data.frame(length = rnorm(50000, 10000, 20000))
carrots$veg <- 'carrot'
cukes$veg <- 'cuke'
vegLengths <- rbind(carrots, cukes)
ggplot(vegLengths, aes(length, fill = veg)) + geom_density(alpha = 0.2)

Now say I only want to plot the region between x=-5000 to 5000, instead of the entire range. How can I do that?

Answer 1

Basically you have two options

scale_x_continuous(limits = c(-5000, 5000))

or

coord_cartesian(xlim = c(-5000, 5000)) 

Where the first removes all data points outside the given range and the second only adjusts the visible area. In most cases you would not see the difference, but if you fit anything to the data it would probably change the fitted values.

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