Re: timecolumn()

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

Ethan Merritt wrote:

> But before anyone plunges in, I point out that there is probably
> another approach that should be considered.  If the task is
> specifically to read time info from the file and associate it
> with axis labels, 

It's not just for labels --- it's for reading timeseries data
in typical human-readable format, i.e. hours, days, and whatnot,
and turning it into continuous data.  timecolumn(n) is supposed to do 
the same thing inside an extended using spec for time/date data as $<n> 
or column(n) already do for ordinary numbers.  The example from that bug 
report I mentioned was time-dependent rescaling of stock prices across 
the change from D-Mark to Euros:

	set xdata time
	set timefmt x '%d/%m/%y'
	to_euro(year,value) = (year < 2002) ? value / 1.95 : value
	plot 'data' using 1:(to_euro(tm_year(timecolumn(1)),$2))

That one works with today's version --- but it's a close shave.