Re: Format "%5f" vs. "%5g"

[Hans-Bernhard B. <HBB...@t-...>]

Theo Hopman wrote:
> Hi all. Why does `set format y "%5f"` not work like `set format y 
> "%5g"`? 

Because it doesn't.  Nor is it supposed to.

It would be rather silly to have commands be different if they did the 
exact same thing, wouldn't it?

> I'm dealing with numbers between 0 and 5, so I would expect both 
> to produce tic labels with right justified floating point numbers in a 
> field of five characters, with no trailing zeros. %5g does, but %5f 
> doesn't: it produces tic labels with six decimal places and trailing zeros.

I'm afraid your expectation is based on reading the wrong documentation. 
  First of all, the '5' in %5f doesn't mean that the output should be 
exactly 5 characters wide.  It says that it shall be *at least* 5.  And 
it did that.

Second, if you wanted the output to fit into exactly 5 chars, you would 
have to fix the precision, too.  As is, you left that choice to the C 
compiler that made your version of gnuplot.  It picked 6, but you want 2:

	set format '% 5.2f'  # keep that ' ' after the '%'!