Centering segments produced by the segment() function - r

Question

Is there a way to specify a 'center' parameter using segments() without specifying individual x0/1 and y0/1 coordinates? Obviously align = 'center' does not work for this as the segments() function is base r code.
#Here is short excerpt from my code:
plot.new()
height1 = 0.9
height3 = 0.7
height5 = 0.5
height4 = 0.3
height2 = 0.1
segments(0, height1, species1_length/largestLength, height1,
lwd=3)
segments(0, height2, species2_length/largestLength, height2,
lwd=3)
segments(0, height3, species3_length/largestLength, height3,
lwd=3)
segments(0, height4, species4_length/largestLength, height4,
lwd=3)
segments(0, height5, species5_length/largestLength, height4,
lwd=3)
I ended up just doing it manually like so:
segments(0.143, height1, ((species1_length / largestLength) * 2) + 0.143,
height1, lwd = 3)
segments(0.16, height2, ((species2_length / largestLength) * 2) + 0.16,
height2, lwd = 3)
segments(0.258, height3, ((species3_length / largestLength) * 2) + 0.258,
height3, lwd = 3)
segments(0.083, height4, ((species4_length / largestLength) / 1.2) +
0.083,
height4, lwd = 3)
segments(0.155, height5, ((species5_length / largestLength) *
2) + 0.155,
height5, lwd = 3)
I just picked an amount to shift the x0 parameter (segments(x0,y0,x1,y1)) and corrected the x1 value by that amount. The length of the line is still the same but my initial value and the proportional shift stay equidistant

Answer 1

I would write a function to do this. For example, I think this should work:
centered_segments <- function(length, height, largest = max(length), ...) {
padding <- (largest - length)/2
segments( padding, height, padding + length, height, ... )
}
You would call it like this:
centered_segments( species_lengths, heights, lwd = 3 )
where species_lengths is a vector containing all of the lengths and heights contains all of the heights, or one at a time like
centered_segments( species1_length, height1, largest_length, lwd = 3 )
etc.