Re: Time format data as a string?

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

On 11/21/2016 12:18 PM, Ethan A Merritt wrote:
> On Saturday, 19 November, 2016 15:43:38 Daniel J Sebald wrote:
>
>>
>> The documentation says:
>>
>>    In all cases, the numbers of each record of a data file must be separated
>>    by white space (one or more blanks or tabs) unless a format specifier is
>>    provided by the `using` option. This white space divides each record into
>>    columns. However, whitespace inside a pair of double quotes is ignored
>> when
>>    counting columns, so the following datafile line has three columns:
>>          1.0 "second column" 3.0
>>
>> Thinking more general, that begs the question as to why gnuplot couldn't
>> accept numbers within a string:
>>
>>    "1.0""second column""3.0"
>>
>> or even CSV format:
>>
>>    1.0,second column,3.0
>>
>> Not that I'm really keen on having that, but it may not be a far step
>> handling those formats.
>
> Gnuplot has accepted all of these input variants since they were introduced
> in version 4.0 (2004).  Plotting from *.csv files is very common.
> The relevant command is
>
>     set datafile seperator
>
> 	- Ethan

I kind of remembered that, but couldn't think of the word.  I kept 
trying "help delimiter".

Are people open to fine-tuning tab-completion?  All it seems to do is 
select from the current directory's file list, but often that doesn't 
make sense given the context and often leads to having to hold down the 
backspace to erase a lengthy name.  For example, more context would be 
good, such as "help im<tab-complete>" would give a list of options 
similar to:

gnuplot> help im
Ambiguous request 'im'; possible matches:
	imag
	image
	import
	impulses

File names have to be in quotes, so only when the line is in an open 
quote, e.g.,

plot "dat<tab-complete>

should a list of files appear as options.

Dan