How to pass command line argument to gnuplot?

command-line gnuplot
Yun Huang picture Yun Huang · Sep 8, 2012 · Viewed 128.8k times · Source

I want to use gnuplot to draw figure from data file, say foo.data. Currently, I hardcoded the data file name in the command file, say foo.plt, and run command gnuplot foo.plg to plot data. However, I want to pass the data file name as a command argument, e.g. running command gnuplot foo.plg foo.data. How to parse the command line arguments in gnuplot script file? Thanks.

Answer

Jari Laamanen picture Jari Laamanen · Sep 8, 2012

You can input variables via switch -e

$ gnuplot -e "filename='foo.data'" foo.plg

In foo.plg you can then use that variable

$ cat foo.plg 
plot filename
pause -1

To make "foo.plg" a bit more generic, use a conditional:

if (!exists("filename")) filename='default.dat'
plot filename
pause -1

Note that -e has to precede the filename otherwise the file runs before the -e statements. In particular, running a shebang gnuplot #!/usr/bin/env gnuplot with ./foo.plg -e ... CLI arguments will ignore use the arguments provided.

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