Treat axis as date/time (epoch)

Question

I'm generating a graph with gnuplot of activity over the last twenty four hours, but the time axis looks really bad because it's trying to fit the long number for every five minutes in the last day.

Is there any way for gnuplot to treat the x-axis as an epoch time, and mark every hour or so?

Olodort

Do you want epoch time as the xtics or a formatted time/date? – Mckinnon

I currently have the xtics as epoch time, I want them to be displayed as a formatted date time, preferably without rewriting the data file to have the formatted date/time – Olodort

Jeffrey, did my comment work for you? – Cassowary

Answer 1

Is this what you want?

set xdata time
set timefmt "%s"
# set xtics 3600
set format x "%H:%M:%S" # or whatever
plot ...

Cassowary

This gives me the error "Need full using spec for x time data" – Olodort

Yeah, you will have to plot and use "using", so if you're plotting columns 1 and 2, do: "plot 'file' using 1:2 ... " instead of just "plot 'file' ..." – Cassowary

Thanks, sorry I missed your comment before! – Olodort

Answer 2

i followed this from the gnuplot howto :

03/21/95 10:00 6.02e23

This file can be plotted by

   set xdata time
   set timefmt "%m/%d/%y"
   set xrange ["03/21/95":"03/22/95"]
   set format x "%m/%d"
   set timefmt "%m/%d/%y %H:%M"
   plot "data" using 1:3

Heth