3.15.2.7 filetype

For some standard binary file formats gnuplot can extract all the necessary information from the file in question. As an example, "format=edf" will read ESRF Header File format files. For a list of the currently supported file formats, type ‘show datafile binary filetypes‘.

There is a special file type called ‘auto‘ for which gnuplot will check if the binary file’s extension is a quasi-standard extension for a supported format.

Command line keywords may be used to override settings extracted from the file. The settings from the file override any defaults. (See binary for details.)

— AVS —

‘avs‘ is one of the automatically recognized binary file types for images. AVS is an extremely simple format, suitable mostly for streaming between applications. It consists of 2 longs (xwidth, ywidth) followed by a stream of pixels, each with four bytes of information alpha/red/green/blue.

— EDF —

‘edf‘ is one of the automatically recognized binary file types for images. EDF stands for ESRF Data Format, and it supports both edf and ehf formats (the latter means ESRF Header Format). More information on specifications can be found at

  http://www.edfplus.info/specs

— PNG —

If gnuplot was configured to use the libgd library for png/gif/jpeg output, then it can also be used to read these same image types as binary files. You can use an explicit command

      plot 'file.png' binary filetype=png

Or the file type will be recognized automatically from the extension if you have previously requested

      set datafile binary filetype=auto

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