[Gnuplot-bugs] Plot of constant function causes gnuplot to 'hang'

[Mikkelsen, C. I. <ph...@nu...>]

On a Ubuntu 5.10 machine plotting of a simple (but constant) function =
causes gnuplot to hang and use all available CPU resources:

~/> gnuplot
       G N U P L O T
       Version 4.0 patchlevel 0
       last modified Thu Apr 15 14:44:22 CEST 2004
       System: Linux 2.6.12-9-686
[...]
gnuplot> plot sin(x/2)**4 + sin(x)**2/2 + cos(x/2)**4

[opens graph window but no result]

Trivial modifications of the expression gives the same result whereas =
non-trivial modifications causes gnuplot to evaluate and plot =
expressions

gnuplot> plot sin(x/2)**4 + 1.001*sin(x)**2/2 + cos(x/2)**4

The behaviour has been reproduced by others. A conjecture is that this =
is related to the first expression evaluating to the constant one, =
however, `plot sin(x)**2 + cos(x)**2` gives no such problem.


Sincerely,

Christian