Inserting a page break within a code chunk in rmarkdown (converting to pdf)

Question

I am using rmarkdown, pandoc and knitr to create a pdf including chunks of r code. Within a code chunk I have a for loop which prints a number of graphs and some statistical output.

I would like to insert a page break into the loop (to appear in the pdf output). This page break would occur after each graph is printed, to ensure each graph is printed on one page and the statistical output on the next.

I have been unable to find a way of including a page break in my r code chunk. I have tried cat("\\newpage") and cat("\\pagebreak") in the hopes it would be recognized by pandoc but to no avail (it is just printed verbatim in the final pdf).

Suggestions appreciated. Here is the code I have so far:

```{r, echo =FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE, comment=NA, results='asis'}
library("markdown") 
library("rmarkdown") 
library("knitr")
library("ggplot2")
for (v in Values){

# read in file
testR <- read.csv(file.path, header=T)

print(ggplot(testR, aes(x=Time, y=Value, color=Batch)) + geom_point(size = 3) +
xlab ("Timepoint") +
ylab (v) +
scale_x_continuous(breaks=seq(0, 60, by=6)) +
ggtitle(paste("Scatterplot of Batches for ", v, sep="")))
ggsave(paste(timestamp, "__", 
       "Scatterplot of Batches for ", v, ".jpeg", sep = "")) 

cat("\\pagebreak")
writeLines(v)
writeLines("\n")
writeLines("\n Test for homogenity of slopes \n")
av1 <- aov(Value~Time*Batch, data=testR)
print(summary(av1))
}
```

Solution 1

See below a reduced and reproducible example. The answer and some general remarks:

• To dynamically create new pages or sections in a markdown document use results='asis' in the chunk options.
• You have to add a linebreak (\n) after \\pagebreak or else "ValueForV" will be pasted directly after "\linebreak", which results in an Undefined control sequence error.
• Make sure that \newpage and \pagebreak are in a separate line by using linebreaks \n before.

• Escape \newpage and \pagebreak (i.e., \\newpage, \\pagebreak).

  ---
  title: "test"
  output: pdf_document
  ---
  
  ```{r, echo=FALSE, results='asis'}
  for (i in 1:3) {
    print(ggplot2::qplot(i, i+1))
    cat("\n\n\\pagebreak\n")
    writeLines("ValueForV")
  }
  ```
  

Solution 2

How to insert a page break within an Rstudio .Rmd code chunk that survives conversion to PDF:

If the \newpage and \pagebreak latex macros aren't working for you, here's a workaround using HTML.

For example:

---
title: "The Rent"
output:
  pdf_document: default
  html_document: default
---

# This is pre-chunk text.

```{r, echo=FALSE, results='asis'}
print("Now we're <b>inside the chunk</b>, using the power of HTML.<br><br><br>!")

print("As you can see from the following diagram")
cat("\n")
print("The rent...<br>")
print(plot(1:10))

print("<P style='page-break-before: always'>")    #forced new-page happens here.

print("<h1>Is too damned high!!</h1>")
writeLines("\n")
print("Finished")
cat("\n\n")
```
This is post chunk text.

Produces this for me:

The key ingredients is the print("<P style='page-break-before: always'>") and the {r, echo=FALSE, results='asis'} in the chunk header.