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gnuplot

Auto plotting all columns

I have a file with several columns of data (the number of columns N might me quite large). I want to plot all the columns as a function of the first one (that is, plot 'Data.txt' using 1:2, 'Data.txt' using 1:3, ..., 'Data.txt' using 1:N). The thing is, I want this command to work when I don't know the number of columns. Is that possible?

Solution

  • You can count the number of columns in your file using awk and then do a looped plot. There might be a function to get the number of columns in your data file already implemented in gnuplot but I do not know it. You can try this:

    N=`awk 'NR==1 {print NF}' Data.txt`
plot for [i=2:N] "Data.txt" u 1:i

    If your first row contains a comment (starting by #) change NR== to the appropriate value. If you have a variable number of columns for different rows then you might want to complicate the awk command.