Re: A shameless plug for string variables

[Juergen W. <wie...@fr...>]

Am Donnerstag, 14. Oktober 2004 09:36 schrieb Hans-Bernhard Broeker:
> > - This new code supersedes the current special case hack for
> >    formatting labels:
> > 	old:    set label "foo %f %f",var1,var2
>
> Not quite.  It was
>
> 	set label "foo %f", var1, " %f", var2
>
> I.e. only one variable per format string, because that way it can
> use gprintf(), and support the gnuplot extension formats like
> %L/%l, which use two format strings to print the same number.
>
> > 	new:    set label sprintf("foo %f %f",var1,var2)
> >    If backwards-compatibilty for this specific case is
> > required, that may be a problem.  Right now the old syntax can
> > cause parsing errors, so I disabled it.
>
> Given that this format has been available for only one officially
> released gnuplot version, I have mixed feelings about throwing it
> out again immediately.  On one hand, it's not some time-honoured
> thing that people would be mad at us for breaking deliberately,
> on the other, it *is* a brand new feature for some of them, so
> it's hard to tell how they will react if we take it away again so
> soon.  What parse errors would that be, anyway?

I think the extra features patch can give parse errors.  Consider

  x = "5"
  set label x, 7

You could parse x for "%", but would it be worth it?

Juergen