feedGnuplot(1)

📦
version 5.5.2 · 2 versions
, in nixpkgs unstable

💖 feedGnuplot(1) 💖

okay so bestie, this is the feedGnuplot page from the General Commands Manual, and it is literally the cutest way to make GNUplot do your bidding from a pipe. grab a strawberry drink 🍓 and let's go.

🌸 NAME 🌸

feedGnuplot — a general purpose pipe-oriented plotting tool ✨

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

likwid-setFreq <coreId> <frequency> [<governor>]

okay so yes, that is exactly what the synopsis line says, no cap — we are simply reporting it, not questioning it, and we are moving on. 💀

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

feedGnuplot is a pipe-oriented plotting frontend for GNUplot that can read intermediate results and create a sort of live plot of the data. it's giving "your data, but make it a movie". 🔥

it's used by likwid-perfscope(1) to print performance counter data printed out by the timeline daemon mode of likwid-perfctr(1).

the Perl script feedGnuplot is not written by the LIKWID Authors — it was written by Dima Kogan and published under GPL. the original web page is https://github.com/dkogan/feedgnuplot. we stan a credited icon. 👑

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -h — prints a help message to standard output, then exits. that's it, that's the whole vibe. 🫶
  • --[no]domain — if enabled, the first element of each line is the domain variable. if not, the point index is used.
  • --[no]dataid — if enabled, each data point is preceded by the ID of the data set that point corresponds to. this ID is interpreted as a string, NOT as just a number. if not enabled, the order of the point is used.
  • --[no]3d — do [not] plot in 3D. this only makes sense with --domain. each domain here is an (x,y) tuple. 🧚
  • --colormap — show a colormapped xy plot. requires extra data for the color. zmin/zmax can be used to set the extents of the colors. automatically increments extraValuesPerPoint. 🌈
  • --[no]stream — do [not] display the data a point at a time, as it comes in. the live-plot main character energy. ⭐
  • --[no]lines — do [not] draw lines to connect consecutive points.
  • --[no]points — do [not] draw points.
  • --circles — plot with circles. this requires a radius be specified for each point. automatically increments extraValuesPerPoint. ⭕
  • --xlabel xxx — set x-axis label.
  • --ylabel xxx — set y-axis label.
  • --y2label xxx — set y2-axis label. does not apply to 3d plots.
  • --zlabel xxx — set z-axis label. only applies to 3d plots.
  • --title xxx — set the title of the plot. 🎀
  • --legend curveID=legend — set the label for a curve plot. use this option multiple times for multiple curves. with --dataid, curveID is the ID. otherwise, it's the index of the curve, starting at 0.
  • --autolegend — use the curve IDs for the legend. titles given with --legend override these.
  • --xlen xxx — when using --stream, sets the size of the x-window to plot. omit this or set it to 0 to plot ALL the data. does not make sense with 3d plots. implies --monotonic.
  • --xmin xxx — set the minimal point in range for the x-axis. these are ignored in a streaming plot.
  • --xmax xxx — set the maximal point in range for the x-axis. these are ignored in a streaming plot.
  • --ymin xxx — set the minimal point in range for the y-axis.
  • --ymax xxx — set the maximal point in range for the y-axis.
  • --y2min xxx — set the minimal point in range for the y2-axis. does not apply to 3d plots.
  • --y2max xxx — set the maximal point in range for the y2-axis. does not apply to 3d plots.
  • --zmin xxx — set the minimal point in range for the z-axis. only applies to 3d plots or colormaps.
  • --zmax xxx — set the maximal point in range for the z-axis. only applies to 3d plots or colormaps.
  • --y2 xxx — plot the data specified by this curve ID on the y2 axis. without --dataid, the ID is just an ordered 0-based index. does not apply to 3d plots.
  • --curvestyle curveID=style — additional styles per curve. with --dataid, curveID is the ID. otherwise, it's the index of the curve, starting at 0. use this option multiple times for multiple curves. 💅
  • --curvestyleall xxx — additional styles for ALL curves.
  • --extracmds xxx — additional commands. these could contain extra global styles for instance.
  • --size xxx — Gnuplot size option.
  • --square — plot data with aspect ratio 1. for 3D plots, this controls the aspect ratio for all 3 axes.
  • --square_xy — for 3D plots, set square aspect ratio for ONLY the x,y axes.
  • --hardcopy xxx — if not streaming, output to a file specified here. format inferred from filename.
  • --maxcurves xxx — the maximum allowed number of curves. this is 100 by default, but can be reset with this option. this exists purely to prevent perl from allocating all of the system's memory when reading bogus data. like, genuinely, it's a guardrail, respect it. 🙈
  • --monotonic — if --domain is given, checks to make sure that the x-coordinate in the input data is monotonically increasing. if a given x-variable is in the past, all data currently cached for this curve is purged. without --monotonic, all data is kept. does not make sense with 3d plots. no --monotonic by default.
  • --extraValuesPerPoint xxx — how many extra values are given for each data point. normally this is 0, and does not need to be specified, but sometimes we want extra data, like for colors or point sizes or error bars, etc. feedGnuplot options that require this (colormap, circles) automatically set it. this option is ONLY needed if unknown styles are used, with --curvestyleall for instance.
  • --dump — instead of printing to gnuplot, print to STDOUT. for debugging. 🐛

🦋 EXAMPLE 🦋

  1. simple real-time plotting example: plot how much data is received on the wlan0 network interface in bytes/second
while true; do sleep 1; cat /proc/net/dev; done | gawk '/wlan0/ {if(b)
{print $2-b; fflush()} b=$2}' |
    feedgnuplot --lines --stream --xlen 10 --ylabel 'Bytes/sec' --xlabel
    seconds

reads the stats of the network interface wlan0 every second, reformats it with gawk and pipes the formated output into feedGnuplot to create a line plot (--lines) of the streaming input (--stream). always show the last 10 seconds (--xlen) and use the labels seconds for the x-axis and Bytes/sec for the y-axis. 🔥

  1. simple real-time plotting example: plot the idle CPU consumption against time
sar 1 -1 | awk '$1 ~ /..:..:../ && $8 ~/^[0-9.]*$/ {print $1,$8;
fflush()}' |
    feedgnuplot --stream --domain --lines --timefmt '%H:%M:%S' --set
    'format x %H:%M:%S '

reads the CPU IDLE consumption and sets the current time as x-axis key. ⏰

👑 AUTHOR 👑

written by Dima Kogan <dima@secretsauce.net>.

💀 BUGS 💀

report Bugs on <https://github.com/dkogan/feedgnuplot/issues>. don't suffer in silence bestie, file the issue. 🫶

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

gnuplot(1), awk(1), sar(1), likwid-perfscope(1), likwid-perfctr(1)

aaaand that's the whole page, you ate that 💅 — this one ships as likwid-5, dated 19.08.2026, and it's a whole vibe. periodt. 🎀✨

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