Plot 2D tables as a fence in gnuplot

Question

A simple question about gnuplot. i have a data represented in a table, that spans further in each direction.

0   1           2           3           4
1   1           2.0408830835    2.8180454121    3.9760428593
2   2.0622871101    3.9709816613    5.7664953944    7.5379858295
3   3.1861064949    5.7565758609    7.8939354949    9.7787163957
4   4.0944785549    6.4357145355    9.5787145459    11.6365303155
5   4.7675231829    6.3181833785    8.8833920556    11.4107253565
....

I want to plot this as a surface or fence in gnuplot, so that first column represents X, first row represents Y, and data at position {x,y} in the table represents Z, the height of the graph.

Is there a way to do it? Thanks!

Answer 1

If do not have gridded data then the following might do the trick for you:

Take a data file "Data.csv":

0.65  0.99  0.28  0.43  0.50
0.98  0.23  0.15  0.94  0.19
0.57  0.65  0.38  0.31  0.20
0.15  0.08  0.88  0.16  0.64
0.37  0.84  0.87  0.59  0.41

and plot it like so:

splot "Data.csv" matrix w lines

Gnuplot will index your data from 0 to n/m. If you want to specify the point (x, y) in space for each data point then you need to specify a grid that tells gnuplot where each point is actually located.