Time format data as a string?

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

I just used the time format in a plot.  It's nice, incorporating the 
date and time and all.  So thank you to whomever.

It did take me a bit to figure out though why something like this failed:

   set timefmt "%m/%d/%y %H:%M"
   plot "data" using 1:2

with data something like

03/03/16 11:30	23.5
03/03/16 11:45	24.8
...

It's because the datafile.c reading routine recognizes that first space 
as a delimiter such that field ':2' is actually 11 in both cases shown. 
  That's fine, as the following works:

   plot "data" using 1:3

and the documentation gives proper examples and all, if not explicitly 
stating.

However, it's a bit of a mental juxtaposition because the person 
scripting the code is thinking of the "03/03/16 11:30" as the "first" 
entry.  Now, gnuplot has string inputs, such as in energy_circles.dat of 
the demo subdirectory.  So, I'm wondering if the the date/time data 
entry could also accept a datafile string.  It shouldn't be too much of 
a C-code alteration.  For example, this might be the equivalent to the 
above:

   plot "data" using 1:2

with data

"03/03/16 11:30" 23.5
"03/03/16 11:45" 24.8
...

I tried that, and gnuplot doesn't allow it (no surprise, as it isn't 
documented to do so).  The way I see it, the user might be more inclined 
to think of date/time data in that fashion.

Dan