3 ms·

Is gnuplot better for the use cases demonstrated on the page here? I've always avoided gnuplot because it has looked pretty hard to get anything useful out of.

Is gnuplot better for the use cases demonstrated on the page here? I've always avoided gnuplot because it has looked pretty hard to get anything useful out of. But uplot looks much more approachable. Just piping some data to "uplot hist --nbins 20" is something I'll remember.

db48x 4y ago
I don’t actually get much chance to use gnuplot, but it can plot data from a pipe. The syntax is a bit more involved as I recall.
- cb321 4y ago
  Within the gnuplot shell you use `<` at the start of a "filename" like gnuplot> plot '<pipeline' It just uses system(3) for "pipeline". So, technically you could have a whole script in there with maybe tricky gnuplot-quoting/escaping of shell stuff. You do have 2 different history logs this way - the shell one and the plot one while the uplot way is integrated. If you really want integrated, you could drive gnuplot with temp files, though each shell command-line would probably have to pass a lot of controls. E.g., #!/bin/sh cat > /tmp/dat # should use mktemp -d cat > /tmp/p.gpi <<-EOF plot '/tmp/dat' $* EOF gnuplot /tmp/p.gpi and then $ seq 1 10 | gpl with lines It is an exercise for the reader (well, it has probably been done N times...) to harden the temp paths, clean up afterward, generalize to source user/maybe per-directory `foo.gpi` setup and so on. In the unlikely event temp space is actually any sort of issue then you might be able to use mkfifo (I've never tried) or else generate a .gpi script that uses the plot '<string' syntax escaping `string`.
  - db48x 4y ago
    No need for any of that; gnuplot can just read from the pipe directly: `seq 1 10 | gnuplot -e "plot '<&2'"`
    - cb321 4y ago
      Nice! Added in 2008, if anyone is curious. (EDIT: and in db48x's comment already[1]) Also, I had to put in a `cat` to make it work: seq 1 10 | gnuplot -e "plot '<cat' with lines" [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34365290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34365290
      - db48x 4y ago
        Oh, that goes to show you how little I use it. I read the documentation and merely assumed that it would work for stdin, but gnuplot exits with an error in that case. This will work, but it’s pretty funky: gnuplot -e "set terminal sixelgd;plot '<&3' with lines" 3< <(seq 1 10) Good luck remembering that!
      - enriquto 4y ago
        No need of cat. You can use filename "-" to mean standard input: seq 1 10 | gnuplot -e 'plot "-"'
dima55 4y ago
You just need a better frontend. A distribution of file sizes < 100kB in my home directory: ls -l \ | awk '$5 < 100000 {print $5}' \ | feedgnuplot \ --histo 0 \ --binwidth 5000 \ --xlabel 'File size (bytes)' \ --ylabel Frequency \ --terminal 'dumb 120 40' \ --unset grid 45 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | * * + + + + + + + | | * * | | * * | 40 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 35 |*** * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 30 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 25 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | 20 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 15 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 10 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 5 |-+* ******** +-| | * * * ******** | | * * ******** ********************** ******** * | | * * + * * + * * + * ******* * + * + + ******** | 0 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 File size (bytes) Usually you want graphical output, but it does fine in ascii

db48x 4y ago

I don’t actually get much chance to use gnuplot, but it can plot data from a pipe. The syntax is a bit more involved as I recall.

cb321 4y ago
Within the gnuplot shell you use `<` at the start of a "filename" like gnuplot> plot '<pipeline' It just uses system(3) for "pipeline". So, technically you could have a whole script in there with maybe tricky gnuplot-quoting/escaping of shell stuff. You do have 2 different history logs this way - the shell one and the plot one while the uplot way is integrated. If you really want integrated, you could drive gnuplot with temp files, though each shell command-line would probably have to pass a lot of controls. E.g., #!/bin/sh cat > /tmp/dat # should use mktemp -d cat > /tmp/p.gpi <<-EOF plot '/tmp/dat' $* EOF gnuplot /tmp/p.gpi and then $ seq 1 10 | gpl with lines It is an exercise for the reader (well, it has probably been done N times...) to harden the temp paths, clean up afterward, generalize to source user/maybe per-directory `foo.gpi` setup and so on. In the unlikely event temp space is actually any sort of issue then you might be able to use mkfifo (I've never tried) or else generate a .gpi script that uses the plot '<string' syntax escaping `string`.
- db48x 4y ago
  No need for any of that; gnuplot can just read from the pipe directly: `seq 1 10 | gnuplot -e "plot '<&2'"`
  - cb321 4y ago
    Nice! Added in 2008, if anyone is curious. (EDIT: and in db48x's comment already[1]) Also, I had to put in a `cat` to make it work: seq 1 10 | gnuplot -e "plot '<cat' with lines" [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34365290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34365290
    - db48x 4y ago
      Oh, that goes to show you how little I use it. I read the documentation and merely assumed that it would work for stdin, but gnuplot exits with an error in that case. This will work, but it’s pretty funky: gnuplot -e "set terminal sixelgd;plot '<&3' with lines" 3< <(seq 1 10) Good luck remembering that!
    - enriquto 4y ago
      No need of cat. You can use filename "-" to mean standard input: seq 1 10 | gnuplot -e 'plot "-"'

dima55 4y ago

You just need a better frontend. A distribution of file sizes < 100kB in my home directory: ls -l \ | awk '$5 < 100000 {print $5}' \ | feedgnuplot \ --histo 0 \ --binwidth 5000 \ --xlabel 'File size (bytes)' \ --ylabel Frequency \ --terminal 'dumb 120 40' \ --unset grid 45 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | * * + + + + + + + | | * * | | * * | 40 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 35 |*** * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 30 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 25 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | 20 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 15 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 10 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 5 |-+* ******** +-| | * * * ******** | | * * ******** ********************** ******** * | | * * + * * + * * + * ******* * + * + + ******** | 0 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 File size (bytes) Usually you want graphical output, but it does fine in ascii