Gnuplot in Action, Second Edition

Chapter 5. Practical matters: strings, loops, and history

This chapter covers

• Strings and textual data
• String operations and macros
• Inline loops
• Internal variables and the stats command
• Command history

In the previous chapters, we looked at ways to manipulate and visualize data using gnuplot, which is the core task that gnuplot was designed for. In this chapter, we’ll sidestep the presentation of gnuplot’s graphic capabilities and introduce some foundational features that will be useful later.

First you’ll learn about strings and textual information. Although gnuplot is primarily a tool for creating graphics, textual labels are nevertheless very important: it’s only through information expressed in a human language, which tells the ...