title: Passing 'mar' graphical parameter to plot function
body: <p>I am confused about the fact that specifying the <code>mar</code> graphical parameter in the <code>plot</code> function does not work. The following would give you two identical plots:</p>
  
  <pre><code>plot(1:10, 10:1, xlab = "x", ylab = "y", mar = c(10, 0, 0, 0))
  plot(1:10, 10:1, xlab = "x", ylab = "y", mar = c(0, 0, 0, 0))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, if I try to specify other graphical parameters, such as <code>col.lab</code> in the example below, it works as expected. The below would give plots with different colours of the labels:</p>
  
  <pre><code>plot(1:10, 10:1, xlab = "x", ylab = "y", col.lab = "red")
  plot(1:10, 10:1, xlab = "x", ylab = "y", col.lab = "black")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Confusingly, specifying the <code>mar</code> graphical parameter outside of the function works fine, as in:</p>
  
  <pre><code>par.default &lt;- par()
  par(mar = c(10, 0, 0, 0))
  plot(1:10, 10:1, xlab = "x", ylab = "y")
  par(par.default)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there a way to fix this (in my eyes) unexpected behaviour?</p>