Plotting a Single Point with Gnuplot
Sometimes simple things can be very hard to do. For instance plotting a single point with gnuplot. Luckily, there are two horrible hacks which allow you to accomplish this from the gnuplot prompt (putting the point’s coordinates in a file is of course just the easy way out…).
Method 1:
gnuplot> plot “< echo ‘x y’”
(Set x and y to your point’s x and y coordinate)
Method 2:
gnuplot> plot “-” (press shift enter)
x y (press enter)
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December 6th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
This information is really helpful.
I would gladly strangle all the people who helped gnuplot arrive to be the most important plotting tool software without even thinking of resolving this banal task.
December 18th, 2010 at 5:04 am
This problem plagued me as well. Thanks for posting this fix.
June 28th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
Many thanks for this! Even 4 years after your post, it comes in handy!
Do you know if there is now any easier way to do this in newer versions of gnuplot?
September 1st, 2012 at 12:32 am
The fact that the gnuplot folks skip over basic plotting entirely and jump straight to plotting custom functions and sinusoids is more than an oversight. It shows why there are so few good software engineers in the world.