arrays [was Re: Problem and solution: Patch for new "stats" command]

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

Ethan Merritt wrote:
> 2)  Here's the command I want to issue in the end:
> 
>    plot for [col=5:20] data using (column(4)) :  (column(col) / statmax(col))  \
>         title label(col)
> 
> I doesn't work, because I can't figure out how to define a function statmax(col)
> that retrieves the desired value.  We don't have a user-level command in gnuplot
> that will retrieve the value of a gnuplot variable by its string name.

Maybe more to the point, we lack array variables, which are exactly what 
this really would call for.  Collections you loop over to retrieve 
individual elements by numbers are just that: arrays.  Whether they be 
emulated by fancy variable name construction from fragments, or a 
function taking the index as an argument, they're still just arrays.

OTOH, arrays (a.k.a. vectors, and eventually matrices) would be one more 
step towards mimicking MatLab.  Which we used to say we weren't going to do.

Maybe all those quirks popping up are to warn us that this is not a 
direction we should continue walking in.