gnuplot : plot pipe output

Question

I have the output a pipe secuence

command_a | command_b | ... | command_n 

the output is a sequence a number

4.2
-1
...
0.2

I can use gnuplot to plot this numbers ? (added gnuplot to pipe sequence )

Answer 1

Did you try with the following?

plot "< command_a | command_b | ... | command_n"

concrete example:

plot "< awk '{a[$1]++}END{for(i in a){print i,a[i]}}' datafile |sort -nk1"

it works for me (tested with gnuplot 4.2 and 5.0 on a linux system).

Answer 2

You can use the '-' source in the plot command. You just need to pipe the command file first and then the data file. For example:

test.gnuplot:

plot '-' with lines

Example command line:

[command generating data] | cat test.gnuplot - | gnuplot -persist