Re: [Gnuplot-info] strptime() fails to recognize negative hours

[Hans-Bernhard B. <HBB...@t-...>]

Am 02.04.2020 um 20:31 schrieb Sergei Naumov via gnuplot-info:

> Well, this whole mess comes from the fact that gnuplot, it seems, can not read
> A COLUMN in an arbitrary formatted way.

No, that's not what this comes from.

> But it would be cool to make a formatted reading available:
> 
> set xdata format "%tH:%tM:%tS"
> set ydata format "%tH:%tM:%tS"
> plot 'datafile' using ($1.1+$1.2/60+$1.3/3600):($2.1+$2.2/60+$2.3/3600)

That would not improve anything because that's exactly what the existing 
code already does behind the scenes (except that it works in seconds,not 
hours).  The actual syntax for that is either (old-style)

	set xdata time
	set ydata time
	set timefmt'%tH:%tM:%tS'
	plot 'datafile' using 1:2

or (new-style)

	plot 'datafile' using 
(timecolumn(1,"%tH:%tM:%tS")):(timecolumn(2,"%tH:%tM:%tS"))

So spelling it out in user-land instead of letting the internal 
machinery handle it will not yield any different result.