Changing Styles of Lines

You can set the style of plotting for both function and data plots. To change the default style for functions, use the set function style command, and to set the default for data plots, use the set data style command.

set function style line-style
set data style line-style

To see the current line style, type the following:

show function style
show data style

You can also add the with keywork to plot and splot commands. For example,

plot sin(x) with boxes
plot "turkey.dat" with impulses

You can also specify differant line style when overlaying differant plots, for instance,

plot sin(x) with boxes, cos(x) with steps

This produces the following graph:

Different Line Styles

The following line styles are available for 2D function and data plots: `lines`, `points`, `linespoints`, `impulses`, `dots`, `steps`, `errorbars`, `boxes`, and `boxerrorbars`

Lines

This is the default plotting style. It connects the data points with a line. Note that if you are doing a Data plot, blanks lines in the data file will cause gnuplot to not connect the data points with a line.

plot sin(x) with lines

Points

The Points Style puts a point at each data point.

plot sin(x) with points

LinesPoints

This is a combiniation of the two style - Lines and Points.

plot sin(x) with linespoints

Impulses

The impulses style draws lines from the x-axis to each point.

Dots

The Dots style places very small dots for each data point. This would be useful for scatterplots with large amounts of data.

Steps

This connects consecutive points with two perpindicular line segments.

plot sin(x) with steps

Error Bars

GnuPlot can add error bars, which suggest a range of data, only for 2D data plots. They use the third columnd in the file as the "delta" value. For more information, see help plot errorbars.

plot "login.dat" with errorbars

There is also a BoxErrorBars style that combines this style with boxes.

Boxes

This draws boxes from the xaxis to the the points.

plot sin(x) with boxes

3D Plots

The only line styles available for 3D plots are "lines", "linespoints", "impulses", and "dots".

For more information on line styles, see help set style

Table of Contents - Previous - Overlaying Multiple Plots - Next - Evaluating Expressions

College of Natural Sciences / University of Northern Iowa / [email protected]