Single column in gnuplot-datafile is not accepted

Question

I want to plot some data in gnuplot (4.6.4 on Ubuntu), and I am running into a strange problem. The data I want to plot is this:

0.200002, 1.802499 , -0.019630 ,         


        

Answer 1

Gnuplot uses white spaces as separators for the data columns. Plotting the first and second column works fine, because for the first column the trailing comma is simply ignored, and the second row is separated by a white space. Now, the third column contains only commas, which gnuplot cannot parse to numbers, so that you effectively have no valid data points. Simply use

set datafile separator ','

or, since 4.6.6 and 5.0.0

set datafile separator comma

and it works fine.