All of Octave's plotting functions use gnuplot
to handle the
actual graphics. There are two low-level functions, gplot
and
gsplot
, that behave almost exactly like the corresponding
gnuplot
functions plot
and `splot'. A number of
other higher level plotting functions, patterned after the graphics
functions found in MATLAB version 3.5, are also available.
These higher level functions are all implemented in terms of the two
low-level plotting functions.
The syntax for Octave's two-dimensional plotting function,
gplot
, is
gplot ranges expression using title style
where the ranges, using, title, and style arguments are optional, and the using, title and style qualifiers may appear in any order after the expression. You may plot multiple expressions with a single command by separating them with commas. Each expression may have its own set of qualifiers.
The optional item ranges has the syntax
[ x_lo : x_up ] [ y_lo : y_up ]
and may be used to specify the ranges for the axes of the plot,
independent of the actual range of the data. The range for the y axes
and any of the individual limits may be omitted. A range [:]
indicates that the default limits should be used. This normally means
that a range just large enough to include all the data points will be
used.
The expression to be plotted must not contain any literal matrices
(e.g. [ 1, 2; 3, 4 ]
) since it is nearly impossible to
distinguish a plot range from a matrix of data.
See the help for gnuplot
for a description of the syntax for the
optional items.
By default, the gplot
command plots the second column of a matrix
versus the first. If the matrix only has one column, it is taken as a
vector of y-coordinates and the x-coordinate is taken as the element
index, starting with zero. For example,
gplot rand (100,1) with linespoints
will plot 100 random values and connect them with lines. When
gplot
is used to plot a column vector, the indices of the
elements are taken as x values.
If there are more than two columns, you can choose which columns to plot with the using qualifier. For example, given the data
x = (-10:0.1:10)'; data = [x, sin(x), cos(x)];
the command
gplot [-11:11] [-1.1:1.1] data with lines, data using 1:3 with impulses
will plot two lines. The first line is generated by the command
data with lines
, and is a graph of the sine function over the
range -10 to 10. The data is taken from the first two columns of the
matrix because columns to plot were not specified with the using
qualifier.
The clause using 1:3
in the second part of this plot command
specifies that the first and third columns of the matrix data
should be taken as the values to plot.
In this example, the ranges have been explicitly specified to be a bit larger than the actual range of the data so that the curves do not touch the border of the plot.
In addition to the basic plotting commands, the whole range of
set
and show
commands from gnuplot
are available,
as is replot
.
The set
and show
commands allow you to set and show
gnuplot
parameters. For more information about the set and show
commands, see the gnuplot
user's guide (also available on line if
you run gnuplot
directly, instead of running it from Octave).
The replot
command allows you to force the plot to be
redisplayed. This is useful if you have changed something about the
plot, such as the title or axis labels. The replot
command also
accepts the same arguments as gplot
or gsplot
(except for
data ranges) so you can add additional lines to existing plots.
For example,
set term tek40 set output "/dev/plotter" set title "sine with lines and cosine with impulses" replot "sin (x) w l"
will change the terminal type for plotting, add a title to the current plot, add a graph of sin (x) to the plot, and force the new plot to be sent to the plot device. This last step is normally required in order to update the plot. This default is reasonable for slow terminals or hardcopy output devices because even when you are adding additional lines with a replot command, gnuplot always redraws the entire plot, and you probably don't want to have a completely new plot generated every time something as minor as an axis label changes.
Since this may not matter as much on faster terminals, you can tell
Octave to redisplay the plot each time anything about it changes by
setting the value of the builtin variable automatic_replot
to the
value "true"
.
Note that NaN values in the plot data are automatically omitted, and Inf values are converted to a very large value before calling gnuplot.
The MATLAB-style two-dimensional plotting commands are:
plot (args)
plot (y)where the argument is taken as the set of y coordinates and the x coordinates are taken to be the indices of the elements, starting with 1. If more than one argument is given, they are interpreted as
plot (x [, y] [, fmt] ...)where y and fmt are optional, and any number of argument sets may appear. The x and y values are interpreted as follows:
@
or -@
specifiers.
Number Gnuplot colors (lines)points style 1 red * 2 green + 3 blue o 4 magenta x 5 cyan house 6 brown there existsHere are some plot examples:
plot (x, y, "@12", x, y2, x, y3, "4", x, y4, "+")This command will plot y with points of type 2 (displayed as
+
) and color 1 (red), y2 with lines, y3 with lines of
color 4 (magenta) and y4 with points displayed as +
.
plot (b, "*")This command will plot the data in b will be plotted with points displayed as
*
.
hold
hold onturns the hold state on. An argument of
off
turns the hold state
off, and hold
with no arguments toggles the current hold state.
ishold
loglog (args)
plot
above for a description of the arguments that
loglog
will accept.
semilogx (args)
plot
above for a description of the arguments
that semilogx
will accept.
semilogy (args)
plot
above for a description of the arguments
that semilogy
will accept.
contour (z, n, x, y)
gnuplot
's contour routines
before this will be very useful.
polar (theta, rho)
The syntax for Octave's three-dimensional plotting function,
gsplot
, is
gsplot ranges expression using title style
where the ranges, using, title, and style arguments are optional, and the using, title and style qualifiers may appear in any order after the expression. You may plot multiple expressions with a single command by separating them with commas. Each expression may have its own set of qualifiers.
The optional item ranges has the syntax
[ x_lo : x_up ] [ y_lo : y_up ] [ z_lo : z_up ]
and may be used to specify the ranges for the axes of the plot,
independent of the actual range of the data. The range for the y and z
axes and any of the individual limits may be omitted. A range
[:]
indicates that the default limits should be used. This
normally means that a range just large enough to include all the data
points will be used.
The expression to be plotted must not contain any literal matrices (e.g.
[ 1, 2; 3, 4 ]
) since it is nearly impossible to distinguish a
plot range from a matrix of data.
See the help for gnuplot
for a description of the syntax for the
optional items.
By default, the gsplot
command plots each column of the
expression as the z value, using the row index as the x value, and the
column index as the y value. The indices are counted from zero, not
one. For example,
gsplot rand (5, 2)
will plot a random surface, with the x and y values taken from the row and column indices of the matrix.
If parametric plotting mode is set (using the command
`set parametric', then gsplot
takes the columns of the
matrix three at a time as the x, y and z values that define a line in
three space. Any extra columns are ignored, and the x and y values are
expected to be sorted. For example, with `parametric' set, it
makes sense to plot a matrix like
but not rand (5, 30)
.
The MATLAB-style three-dimensional plotting commands are:
mesh (x, y, z)
x
, and y from meshdom
and
a matrix z corresponding to the x and y coordinates of
the mesh.
meshdom (x, y)
mesh
and
meshdom
.
bar (x, y)
bar
produces a bar graph.
If only one argument is given, it is taken as a vector of y-values
and the x coordinates are taken to be the indices of the elements.
If two output arguments are specified, the data are generated but
not plotted. For example,
bar (x, y);and
[xb, yb] = bar (x, y); plot (xb, yb);are equivalent.
grid
stairs (x, y)
stairs (x, y);and
[xs, ys] = stairs (x, y); plot (xs, ys);are equivalent.
title (string)
replot
to redisplay it with the new title.
xlabel (string)
ylabel (string)
replot
to redisplay it with the new
labels.
sombrero (n)
clearplot
clg
clg
is aliased to clearplot
for compatibility with MATLAB.
The commands `gplot clear', `gsplot clear', and `replot
clear' are equivalent to `clearplot'. (Previously, commands like
`gplot clear' would evaluate `clear' as an ordinary expression
and clear all the visible variables.)
closeplot
gnuplot
subprocess. If you are using X11,
this will close the plot window.
purge_tmp_files
gnuplot
and then sends
commands to gnuplot
through a pipe. Octave will delete the
temporary files on exit, but if you are doing a lot of plotting you may
want to clean up in the middle of a session.
A future version of Octave will eliminate the need to use temporary
files to hold the plot data.
axis (limits)
axis
turns autoscaling on.
If your plot is already drawn, then you need to use replot
before
the new axis limits will take effect. You can get this to happen
automatically by setting the built-in variable automatic_replot
to "true"
. See section User Preferences.
hist (y, x)
bar (xx, nn)
will plot the histogram.