MUPLOT(1)

💖 MUPLOT — bestie edition 💖

okay so this is muplot, a User Command, section 1 of the manual. if you've ever been like "i have SO many data files and i need them ALL on one plot" — hi, this is your girl. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

muplot — plot a multi-curve figure from multiple data by using Gnuplot. literally that's the whole job. she plots, she slays. 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

muplot [OPTION]... [STYLE] [FILE] [AXES] [FILE] [AXES] ...

yes bestie, that's it. options, then style, then file/axes pairs as many times as your heart desires. 🫶

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Muplot is a simple, non-interactive gnuplot-wrapper. her whole vibe is: take a bunch of data files and make one multi-curve figure out of them. that's it, that's the girl. 🎀

and she can produce PostScript, PDF, PNG or JPEG output file formats. so many formats, so little time. iconic. 👑

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

the full menu, no skips, no cuts, we're listing every single one because she deserves it:

• --help|-H — display help 💖
• -h — display short help (for when you're in a rush)
• -V — print program version number
• -s — create PostScript-file
• -S — send PostScript output to STDOUT (the same as -s -o -)
• -n — create PNG-file
• -j — create JPEG-file
• -p — create PDF-file (requires the gnuplot "pdfcairo" driver) ⚠️
• -X — don't set the terminal to 'x11' (use gnuplot's default instead)
• -r0 — reload data files continuously (default 8640:10)
• -r <N:dt> — reload data files continuously by the specified config values
• -c <cmd> — execute gnuplot command(s) (using the default plot style)
• -m — monochrome plot (valid for PostScript or PDF)
• -l — set plot size to 800x600 (valid for PNG and JPEG)
• -o — base name of the output file
• -q — quiet mode (all messages except errors to be suppressed) 🤫
• -F <str> — input-data field separator (default is a single space character)
• -i — ignore local command file './.muplotset'
• -I <file> — specify an alternative command file instead of './.muplotset'
• -U — do not sort the file list
• -T <dir> — use this directory for temporary/working output files

🎨 Styles/Settings

the little style words you can drop in, and yes there are a lot of them:

• lp — lines and points
• l — lines
• p — points
• pp — circle points
• nn — various points (types)
• d — dots
• b — boxes
• g — grid
• nk — do not plot keys (skip file names lables)
• e — errorbars — default used columns are 1:2:3 (x:y:yerror)
• a — fields with arrows; The data file has a special format in this case. Use 'prefield' to prepare such data files.
• dt=<fmt> — date/time series with the specified format; For example: dt="%H:%M.%S@%H:%M" where the first part, in front of "@", defines the data format, and the second part defines the format that will be used for tic labels. Here, hours and minutes are separated by ':', respectively minutes and seconds by '.'. Another example is date and time stamp: dt="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
• 3d — plot 3-d data using 1:2:3
• u=<fmt> — user specified plot style format (as defined in Gnuplot); For example: u="points pointtype 2 pointsize 3"; To see the present terminal and palette capabilities of gnuplot use the command 'muplot -c test'.
• s=<opt> — user specified setting (as defined in Gnuplot); For example: s="logscale x"

📐 Axes

• x:y,x:y-z — columns in the file defining the x/y-axes of the curve(s); Default are 1:2 or 1:2:3 for data with errors. In case that only one column is provided the default axes are 0:1 — the x-axis will be a simple index then.

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File(s) could be a single file name whereas '-' means <stdin>, many files enclosed in '' or "" like "file1 file2 file3", or any valid shell pattern as for example "*.dat". 🐚

The files '$HOME/.muplotset' and './.muplotset', if existing, will be included at the beginning of the gnuplot script. The command block between "#BEGIN" and "#END" in those files will be pasted to the end of the script. If you want that the global '$HOME/.muplotset' is ignored, create in your local directory a file named '.muplotset.noglobal'. 🚫

In case you want to view the output, define the env variable MUPLOT_VIEWER and export it, for example:

MUPLOT_VIEWER="xpdf -z page"; export MUPLOT_VIEWER

Then the program will prompt you to view the plot, and after confirmation the viewer will present the graphics. If the postscript file format is chosen ('-s' option), and MUPLOT_VIEWER is not defined, the viewer is preset to 'gv', and per default you are prompted to view the output. To disable this behavior use the command "unset MUPLOT_VIEWER". 💀

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

bestie these are the moment, look at her go:

1. On X-terminal view a multi-curve plot of all data-files with extension 'dat'

muplot "*.dat"

2. Print a sinus curve in black-and-white color on a PostScript-printer

muplot -m -S -c "set title 'Function f(x)=sin(x)'; plot sin(x);"
| lpr

3. Plot data from file "example.dat" using columns 1:2, 3:4, and 3:5 as x/y-axes in the multi-curve plot; a PostScript-file with the name "example.ps" is automatically created.

muplot -s example.dat 1:2,3:4-5

4. Create graphics in PDF-format reading data from file "example.1.dat" (columns 1:2), and from file "example.2.dat" (columns 3:4)

muplot -p lp example.1.dat 1:2 example.2.dat 3:4

5. View file where the first column is data, and the third and forth columns are date of the form 'yyyy-mm-dd' and time in the form 'hh:mm:ss'

cat example_counts_per_second.dat | muplot dt="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
- 3:1

6. Plot 3-dimensional data from file "example_3d.dat" using the 1, 3, and 5-th data columns with dots-plot-style, enabling grid, setting the xrange to [0:10], disabling keys and defining a plot-title

muplot nk g d 3d s="xrange [0:10]" s="title 'This is a 3-d plot'"
example_3d.dat 1:3:5

7. Replot data 1000 times every 5 seconds and write temporary created files in the '/tmp' directory; This scenario is useful in case of growing or otherwise changing over time data-file

muplot -T /tmp -r 1000:5 example.dat

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🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

found a bug? not the vibe, but we need to know fr fr. Report bugs to <gnu@mirendom.net>. 💌

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright © 1996-2009, 2011-2014 Dimitar Ivanov

License: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

ngl that last bit means: use her, love her, change her, share her — but if she eats your homework, that's on you. no cap. 🙈

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that's the whole page bestie!! this is muplot 5.6.2, dated July 2014, living her best life in manual section 1 — MUPLOT(1) ✨💖🦋 periodt. 🎀