[Gnuplot-info] datafile separator

[János L. <jan...@ya...>]

Hi,

I am using tab - "\t" - in a datafile as field separator.  I have 33 fields in a row.  I set in the plotting script the datafile separator explicitly.

set datafile separator "\t"

I expected when gnuplot sees TWO tabs after each other it treats the nonexistent data in-between these two tabs as a field with no data.  Unfortunately it is not the case.  It swallows bot tabs as one tab and let say if it is the 28th field that has no data, it plots the value of the 29th field of that row.

What can I do to change this behavior ?  Changing from tab to vertical bar, or anything else, is not the solution, because the double vertical bar would be treated as jut one, the same way as it is done for the tabs.

HELP !!! :-)

Here are two lines from the datafile to illustrate:

Oct 26, 2009 11:04:37	16257	2081	2136	1809	1651	3011	3102	2698	6961	4158	2176	6028	2262	3604	3766	4535	4096	3916	8443	4423	4116	5199	2950	5368	9619		0	85353	107744	2625	87907
Oct 26, 2009 12:04:26	26285	1603	4534	1237	1151	1584	2147	2193	4749	3659	7776	5746	1762	2951	3301	3592	3141	3208	3539	7886	3609	3848	2522	4485	8374	0	960	78954	129196	2562	115163

In the first record between 9619 and 0 there are TWO tabs.  On the second record in the same position between 8374 and 960 there is a field value 0.  I want gnuplot in the case of the first record NOT to plot 0 as a value for field 27.  Right now it does, and that 0 belongs to field 28.

Thanks ahead,

János