3.14 plot

‘plot‘ is the primary command for drawing plots with ‘gnuplot‘. It creates plots of functions and data in many, many ways. ‘plot‘ is used to draw 2-d functions and data; ‘splot‘ draws 2D projections of 3D surfaces and data. ‘plot‘ and ‘splot‘ contain many common features; see ‘splot‘ for differences. Note specifically that although the ‘binary <binary list>‘ variation does work for both ‘plot‘ and ‘splot‘, there are small differences between these modes.

Syntax:

      plot {<ranges>}
           {<iteration>}
           {<function> | {"<datafile>" {datafile-modifiers}}}
           {axes <axes>} {<title-spec>} {with <style>}
           {, {definitions{,}} <function> ...}

where either a <function> or the name of a data file enclosed in quotes is supplied. A function is a mathematical expression or a pair of mathematical expressions in parametric mode. The expressions may be defined completely or in part earlier in the stream of ‘gnuplot‘ commands (see ‘user-defined‘).

It is also possible to define functions and parameters on the ‘plot‘ command itself. This is done merely by isolating them from other items with commas.

Examples:

      plot sin(x)
      plot sin(x), cos(x)
      plot f(x) = sin(x*a), a = .2, f(x), a = .4, f(x)
      plot "datafile.1" with lines, "datafile.2" with points
      plot [t=1:10] [-pi:pi*2] tan(t), \
           "data.1" using (tan($2)):($3/$4) smooth csplines \
                    axes x1y2 notitle with lines 5
      plot for [datafile in "spinach.dat broccoli.dat"] datafile

See also ‘show plot‘.