Re: [Gnuplot-info] Histograms with dates on the X axis

[CLOSE D. <Dav...@us...>]

Hans-Bernhard Bröker wrote:

> > A little searching hints that this message may be somewhat misleading.
> > That what it really means is that a "format" must be added.
> 
> Where your searching let you think you found this, it's wrong.
> 
> The error message means exactly what it says: you don't have sufficient
> 'using' specifiers.  It makes little sense to mix
> xticlabels/histogramming with time/date features.  The former treat the
> input as strings without any numerical meaning by design, the latter is
> a means of extracting a numerical meaning out of human-readable
> date/time strings.  So I think you should just forget about 'xdata time'
> and plot your input as it is.

Thanks for the reply.

My code says,
 plot "/tmp/file" using 2:xtic(1), "/tmp/file" using ($3+$4+$5+$6+$7) axis x1y2
I've tried it without the :xtic(1) and still get the error. The help screen for "set style histogram" says, "Each element of the `plot` command must specify a single input data source (e.g. one column of the input  file), possibly with associated tic values or key titles", so I have trouble understanding what additional using specifier I could add.

The data file looks like this:
2009-01 1 1 0 0 0 0
2009-02 1 1 0 0 0 0
2009-03 3 9 0 0 0 0
2009-04 6 6 0 0 3 4
2009-05 11 14 3 3 0 4
2009-06 10 2 18 7 4 5
2009-07 12 18 31 7 6 13
2009-08 10 10 37 6 9 22
2009-09 14 25 45 8 13 24
2009-10 16 19 47 18 16 3
2009-11 14 24 29 7 6 3

I supposed I could drop the year and plot against the month -- for now. But this won't work once the file contains two more lines, as it will in little more than a month.

Can you suggest the actual commands needed?

	Dave Close