3.15.2.5 format

The default binary format is a float. For more flexibility, the format can include details about variable sizes. For example, ‘format="%uchar%int%float"‘ associates an unsigned character with the first using column, an int with the second column and a float with the third column. If the number of size specifications is less than the greatest column number, the size is implicitly taken to be similar to the last given variable size.

Furthermore, similar to the using specification, the format can include discarded columns via the ‘*‘ character and have implicit repetition via a numerical repeat-field. For example, ‘format="%*2int%3float"‘ causes gnuplot to discard two ints before reading three floats. To list variable sizes, type ‘show datafile binary datasizes‘. There are a group of names that are machine dependent along with their sizes in bytes for the particular compilation. There is also a group of names which attempt to be machine independent.

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