Gnuplot in Action

Chapter 4. Practical matters

This chapter covers

• Understanding and managing options
• Data file details
• Handling strings
• Interacting with gnuplot
• Getting help

In the previous two chapters, we looked at ways to manipulate and visualize data using gnuplot, which is the core task that gnuplot was designed for. Before moving on to more sophisticated application areas, let’s close this introductory part of the book by looking at some features of gnuplot that don’t directly have much to do with data and visualization, but that are useful to have around.

First, we’ll learn how to view and manipulate options, which are gnuplot’s way of controlling details of its operation. Then we’ll summarize what we’ve learned about input file formats and show how ...