Make part of x-axis dashed

[Todd Jones]

Is it possible to make part of the x-axis dashed, with the rest of the x-axis solid? This could be useful if somebody has a break in the years they are plotting, and they want to alert the reader to this break.

This is possible to do with a line in a graph (see https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...ts-of-the-line), but is it also possible to do with the x-axis?

As an example, suppose I make a graph as follows. How can I make the x-axis between 2 and 3 dashed?

sysuse auto2, clear
scatter trunk headroom

[Nick Cox]

Here's a guess, and I would be happy to learn of a better solution.

You can make the entire x axis dashed,

xsc(lp(dash))

but making part dashed seems harder. I think you would need to suppress the axis and then draw solid and dashed lines to taste in the same place.

[Andrew Musau]

Here is an implementation of Nick's solution:

sysuse auto, clear
tw (scatter trunk headroom, ysc(noline) xline(1, lp(dash) lstyle(grid) lc(gs8))) ///
(scatteri 0 1 10 1, recast(line) lc(gs8) lstyle(grid)), leg(off) plotregion(margin(zero))

[Todd Jones]

Very helpful - thank you Nick Cox and Andrew Musau!