Re: [Gnuplot-info] Enhanced-escape bug (at least 8 years old)...

[Ethan A M. <eam...@gm...>]

On Monday, 20 January 2014 05:41:04 PM Craig DeForest wrote:
> In enhanced-mode, escaped characters such as ampersand require not one escape but two.  
> For example, the string 'S\&P 500' renders as "S P 500" in a title.  

I think you will find that is not quite true. 
The single-quoted string you show will print as S&P 500.
It would act as you show if the string were in double-quotes.

> The string 'S\\&P 500' renders correctly.  This is reproducible with pdf, eps, and all the cairo terminals.

Again true for double-quotes but not for single-quotes.

 
> I googled for the problem, and found this thread 
> ("http://comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot.narkive.com/GtFk5Tfg/ampersand-in-title")
> from 8 years ago, complete with in-character comments from both Juergen and Ethan.
> As far as I can tell, the behavior has been neither documented nor repaired in that time.  

It is documented under "help enhanced" and "help quotes".
Those bits may have been added in response to that query 8 years ago.
I don't recall.

> Or is it now established behavior that instead needs to be documented?

It is an integral part of the enhanced text processing.
The same is true for all the special characters:   & _ ^ @ ~

The suggestions in that thread from 8 years ago are still valid.
You have the options:

- Turn off enhanced mode
or
- Use single quotes and a single backslash to escape each special character
or
- Use double quotes and two backslashes to escape each special character
or
- (kind of obscure but nonetheless "correct" if you are in a UTF-8 locale) 
  use the character at unicode FF06   ＆
  instead of the one at unicode 0026  &
 
> Is this something about which a patch would be welcome? 

A patch to do what, exactly?
Maybe each of the enhanced text markup characters should 
have its own help index entry?

	Ethan
	

> Cheers,
> Craig
> 
> 
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