Re: comment handling

[Ethan A M. <sf...@us...>]

On Wednesday, May 23, 2012 01:50:43 pm pl...@pi... wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am getting some inconsistent behaviour from comment handling.
> 
> gnuplot> set timefmt "%d.%m.%y:%H:%M"; set xdata time; set ylab "mm Hg" 
> ; set grid
> 
> 21.05.12:23:20  96 72  65           # wetday , not walking
> 22.05.12:09:00                      # rise 9am 81kg
> 23.05.12:04:30 120 87  49           # work late,bed
> 
> 
> help says:
> 
>   Comments are supported as follows: a `#` may appear in most places in 
> a line
>   and `gnuplot` will ignore the rest of the line.  It will not have this 
> effect
>   inside quotes, inside numbers (including complex numbers), inside command
>   substitutions, etc.  In short, it works anywhere it makes sense to work.

That section is refering to gnuplot command lines, not to data files.
The very next line says "See also `set datafile commentschars` 
for specifying comment characters in data files".

gnuplot> help set datafile comment
 The `set datafile commentschars` tells `gnuplot` what characters are used in a
 data file to begin comment lines. If the first non-blank character on a line is
 one of the specified characters then the rest of the input line is ignored.
 Default value of the string is "#!" on VMS and "#" otherwise.



> 
> However the middle line with the missing data tries to plot the comment !
> 
> I'm using a plot that is essentially:
> 
> plot datafile using 1:2, '' using 1:3 , '' using 1:4
> 
> the first line joins 96 and120 with a straight line.
> the second gets a break (this is what I expected for all three)
> the last line tries to plot "9am" and so I get a line 65 9 49
> 
> All this seems to indicate that it is parsing "#" and "rise" as NaN 
> rather than seeing the comment as a comment.
> 
> Is this expected? If so the help needs to be changed.
> 
> regards, Peter.
> 
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