gnuplot specify column for label

Question

I am doing a multiplot in gnuplot. I want to pick the labels for the points from certain columns. For example, say the data file is:

 year temp label1 year humidity label2
 1990 30   hot    1991 100      wet
 1992 25   warm   1992 83       dry

I want to plot column 2 (temp) versus column 1 (year) using column 3 (label1) as label for the points and on the same graph plot column 5 (humidity) versus column 4 (year) using column 6 (label2) as label. Is this possible?

  plot 'weather.dat' using 1:2 with points with labels, '' using 4:5 with points with labels

Matthew Matthew · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-26T10:29:16

Use the labels style. This style expects to receive the x and y coordinates along with the label column.

For your data, and the first part of the plot, we can do

plot 'weather.data' using 1:2 with points, '' using 1:2:3 with labels

If we wish to add a little spacing, we can adjust the label y coordinate. For example, moving it up by 1 unit with

plot 'weather.data' using 1:2 with points, '' using 1:($2+1):3 with labels

For this plot, in order to make sure that everything fit completely inside, I manually set the xrange to [1989:1993] and the yrange to [20:35].

A similar approach works with your other columns of data, which can, of course, be combined with this as normal (although with the massively different y range, probably should be done on it's own plot, or using a secondary axis).

See help labels for more information.

gnuplot specify column for label

1 Answers