Re: plot ...007

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 mi...@ph... wrote:

> It has been just discovered by Daniel and me that these commands draw a
> plot (at y=0):
> plot .
> plot ..
> plot ...
> plot ...007
> 
> Isn't this a parser bug?

Not exactly a bug --- just an unusually surprising feature.  Essentially,
the parser at least accepts:

1) `.' all on its own as a valid number, equal to 0.0
2) tokens without whitespace between them
3) keyword-less linetype and pointtype options, for compatibility with
   pre-3.7 gnuplot

So the above commands are parsed to be equivalent to

	plot 0.0
	plot 0.0 lt 0
	plot 0.0 lt 0 pt 0
	plot 0.0 lt 0 pt 0.007

Feature 3) could be removed --- it's never been documented, I think,
and is obsolete.

Feature 2) is actively being used by people --- you sometimes do see 
example commands like

	plot 'file'u1:2:3

So killing this would hurt.  As to 1), I really don't know whether we
should do something about it.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (br...@ph...)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.