gnuplot documentation

70 SET-SHOW gnuplot 4.3 101
terminal, will work. Some other options have been added. If the format string looks like a floating point
format, then gnuplot tries to construct a reasonable format.
Characters not preceded by "%" are printed verbatim. Thus you can include spaces and labels in your
format string, such as "%g m", which will put " m" after each number. If you want "%" itself, double
it: "%g %%".
See also set xtics (p. 143) for more information about tic labels, and set decimalsign (p. 97) for
how to use non-default decimal separators in numbers printed this way. See also
electron demo (electron.dem).
70.21.1 Gprintf
The string function gprintf("format",x) uses gnuplot’s own format specifiers, as do the gnuplot commands
set format, set timestamp, and others. These format specifiers are not the same as those used by the
standard C-language routine sprintf(). gprintf() accepts only a single variable to be formatted. Gnuplot
also provides an sprintf("format",x1,x2,...) routine if you prefer. For a list of gnuplot’s format options,
see format specifiers (p. 101).
70.21.2 Format specifiers
The acceptable formats (if not in time/date mode) are:
Tic-mark label numerical format specifiers
Format Explanation
%f floating point notation
%e or %E exponential notation; an ”e” or ”E” before the power
%g or %G the shorter of %e (or %E) and %f
%x or %X hex
%o or %O octal
%t mantissa to base 10
%l mantissa to base of current logscale
%s mantissa to base of current logscale; scientific power
%T power to base 10
%L power to base of current logscale
%S scientific power
%c character replacement for scientific power
%P multiple of pi
A ’scientific’ power is one such that the exponent is a multiple of three. Character replacement of
scientific powers ("%c") has been implemented for powers in the range -18 to +18. For numbers outside
of this range the format reverts to exponential.
Other acceptable modifiers (which come after the "%" but before the format specifier) are "-", which
left-justifies the number; "+", which forces all numbers to be explicitly signed; " " (a space), which
makes positive numbers have a space in front of them where negative numbers have "-"; "#", which
places a decimal point after floats that have only zeroes following the decimal point; a positive integer,
which defines the field width; "0" (the digit, not the letter) immediately preceding the field width, which
indicates that leading zeroes are to be used instead of leading blanks; and a decimal point followed by
a non-negative integer, which defines the precision (the minimum number of digits of an integer, or the
number of digits following the decimal point of a float).
Some systems may not support all of these modifiers but may also support others; in case of doubt,
check the appropriate documentation and then experiment.
Examples:
set format y "%t"; set ytics (5,10) # "5.0" and "1.0"
set format y "%s"; set ytics (500,1000) # "500" and "1.0"