Re: [Plplot-devel] PLPLOT_DEV

[David M. <da...@as...>]

On Jan 5, 2010, at 14:55 , Werner Smekal wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> On Jan 5, 2010, at 11:24 PM, David MacMahon wrote:
>
>> I just grepped for "getenv" in the source tree and didn't find
>> anything that looked like PGPLOT's use of the "PGPLOT_DEV"
>> environment variable.
>
> What's the purpose of this variable?

It is used to specify a "default" driver that will be used if no  
other driver is specified.  If it is not defined and no driver is  
specified, then the user is prompted with a driver list.

For example, if I like using the xcairo driver, I could do...

export PLPLOT_DEV=xcairo

...and then I wouldn't need to pass "-dev xcairo" on each command  
line to use xcairo, but I could pass "-dev xxx" if I wanted to use a  
different driver.

IMHO, it's a harmless convenience.

Dave