Re: Request for comments: string variable patchset 2

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

> > 	N = N + 1
> > 	filename = "run_" . N . ".dat"
> > 	print filename
> > 		run_4.dat
> >
> > I am not aware of any problems introduced by either feature,
> > but comments are welcome.
>
> I'm not sure if this one is really needed.  I would rather like to
> have a builtin function "atof" to explicitly cast strings to
> numbers.

I like this, it is like in awk.


> I think the extra features patch can give parse errors.  Consider
>
>   x = "5"
>   set label x, 7

I think that these problems may arise only if there is a "default" option
expected for a given value (like "font" option for "set term post", where
just a string is OK). But this can always be avoided by a particular
keyword.


>  file = "input.dat"
>  value = `some-command @file`

I would propose to ignore macro expansion in `blabla1` and
!blabla2

but allow them in
system('blabla2')
and in
value = execute('blabla1');

Where the execute() is a new command. The user could use what he wants.


> set label sprintf("foo %f %f",var1,var2)

I really prefer the sprintf() way as it is a function like in C & friends.


>>   gnuplot> print sprintf("%i", 5.)
>>   0
>This example doesn't work in C either.

But it works in Octave and awk; I use it there to print an integer part of
the value. I would rather prefer an inteligent version that returns in the
above example 5.

> FOO = floor(FOO)
> "see man page for sprintf"

Well, "man floor" says that result of floor() and ceil() is also a double
value, so it does not help. Just in gnuplot it returns an integer.

---
PM