Re: (no subject)

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Monday 17 May 2004 04:58 pm, Wesley Morgan wrote:
> I'm simply thinking that I would like to be able to execute something
> like this...
>
> set dbserver 'localhost'
> set dbname 'test'
> set dbuser 'test'
> plot 'select * from table' with lines
> <ask for password if necessary>
> <plot away>

I'm lost. What is this snippet supposed to represent?
Are these commands to gnuplot?

> As you see, I'm not looking for an interface TO gnuplot, the command
> line works quite well for me. I'm more curious as to how difficult it
> would be to add this functionality to gnuplot itself. It already
> supports a tremendous range of output formats, so why not accept a few
> more input methods? 

But isn't that just another pipe, or anyway a pair of pipes?
What is different about this input to gnuplot that distinguishes it
from any other input to gnuplot?  

If I understand what you are trying to do, you should be able
to send your commands *to* the database with shell escapes
and read the output *from* the database via a pipe.
Something more or less like:

gnuplot> ! mkfifo ./database_out
gnuplot> ! db 'select * from table' > ./database_out
gnuplot> plot '< ./database_out' with lines


-- 
Ethan A Merritt       merritt@u.washington.edu
Biomolecular Structure Center
Mailstop 357742
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195