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

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

Steve Cohen wrote:

> Having recently swum in these same shark-infested waters myself (I am
> not a developer of this project, just a user like you) I would first
> get rid of
> set xdata time
> set timefmt "%Y-%m"
> set format x "%m\\n%Y"
> 
> Histograms and these time functions simply don't mix.  At all.

Thank you to both Steve and Hans-Bernhard for that. I wonder if this
would merit mention in the manual?

> You will, of course, then, not see labels on your x-axis, but you
> should at least see a graph.
> 
> Now, for those x-axis labels, Gnuplot's string functions are your
> friend:
> 
> plot "/tmp/file" using
> 2:xtic(substr(stringcolumn(1),6,7)\\nsubstr(stringcolumn(1),1,4),
> "/tmp/file" using ($3+$4+$5+$6+$7)
> axis x1y2

Thank you, Steve. I was in the process of researching how to get the
labels I need when your note dramatically shortened my effort. But I did
need to change your suggestion slightly.

1. Your parentheses weren't balanced (easy to fix).
2. \\n doesn't work in that place. I had to change it to '."\n".'. That
is, put it in quotes and use string concatenation. I could also have
used sprintf but that takes more characters to type.
3. I had to add "bmargin 3" so the second line of label would actually
appear.

	Dave Close