How do you plot bar charts in gnuplot?

Question

How do you plot bar charts in gnuplot with text labels?

Answer 1

plot "data.dat" using 2: xtic(1) with histogram

Here data.dat contains data of the form

title 1
title2 3
"long title" 5

Answer 2

I recommend Derek Bruening's bar graph generator Perl script. Available at http://www.burningcutlery.com/derek/bargraph/

Answer 3

Simple bar graph:

set boxwidth 0.5
set style fill solid
plot "data.dat" using 1:3:xtic(2) with boxes

data.dat:

0 label       100
1 label2      450
2 "bar label" 75

If you want to style your bars differently, you can do something like:

set style line 1 lc rgb "red"
set style line 2 lc rgb "blue"

set style fill solid
set boxwidth 0.5

plot "data.dat" every ::0::0 using 1:3:xtic(2) with boxes ls 1, \
     "data.dat" every ::1::2 using 1:3:xtic(2) with boxes ls 2

If you want to do multiple bars for each entry:

data.dat:

0     5
0.5   6


1.5   3
2     7


3     8
3.5   1

gnuplot:

set xtics ("label" 0.25, "label2" 1.75, "bar label" 3.25,)

set boxwidth 0.5
set style fill solid

plot 'data.dat' every 2    using 1:2 with boxes ls 1,\
     'data.dat' every 2::1 using 1:2 with boxes ls 2

If you want to be tricky and use some neat gnuplot tricks:

Gnuplot has psuedo-columns that can be used as the index to color:

plot 'data.dat' using 1:2:0 with boxes lc variable

Further you can use a function to pick the colors you want:

mycolor(x) = ((x*11244898) + 2851770)
plot 'data.dat' using 1:2:(mycolor($0)) with boxes lc rgb variable

Note: you will have to add a couple other basic commands to get the same effect as the sample images.

Answer 4

I would just like to expand upon the top answer, which uses GNUPlot to create a bar graph, for absolute beginners because I read the answer and was still confused from the deluge of syntax.

We begin by writing a text file of GNUplot commands. Lets call it commands.txt:

 set term png

 set output "graph.png"

 set boxwidth 0.5

 set style fill solid

 plot "data.dat" using 1:3:xtic(2) with boxes

set term png will set GNUplot to output a .png file and set output "graph.png" is the name of the file it will output to.

The next two lines are rather self explanatory. The fifth line contains a lot of syntax.

plot "data.dat" using 1:3:xtic(2) with boxes

"data.dat" is the data file we are operating on. 1:3 indicates we will be using column 1 of data.dat for the x-coordinates and column 3 of data.dat for the y-coordinates. xtic() is a function that is responsible for numbering/labeling the x-axis. xtic(2), therefore, indicates that we will be using column 2 of data.dat for labels.

"data.dat" looks like this:

 0 label       100

 1 label2      450

 2 "bar label" 75

To plot the graph, enter gnuplot commands.txt in terminal.