In
Unix, graph is a
command-line utility used to draw plots from tabular data.
History
The graph utility, written by
Douglas McIlroy, was present in the first version of Unix, and every later version, for instance:
* Unix
Version 7, released in 1979
* SunOS 5.10, the
Solaris version released in 2005
Its output is a sequence of commands for the plot utility, which creates
plot
Plot or Plotting may refer to:
Art, media and entertainment
* Plot (narrative), the story of a piece of fiction
Music
* ''The Plot'' (album), a 1976 album by jazz trumpeter Enrico Rava
* The Plot (band), a band formed in 2003
Other
* ''Plot ...
s using
ASCII graphics.
This design demonstrates the
Unix philosophy: defining the plot (graph) and drawing it (plot) are separate tools, so they can be recombined with other tools. For instance, plot can be substituted with a different utility, that accepts the same plot commands, but creates the plot in a graphics file format, or sends it to a
plotter
A plotter is a machine that produces vector graphics drawings. Plotters draw lines on paper using a pen, or in some applications, use a knife to cut a material like vinyl or leather. In the latter case, they are sometimes known as a cutting pl ...
.
Unix v7 also provided device drivers for plotting the results to various graphics devices;
this was announced as ''now standard''.
[
]
The
GNU plotutils
GNU plotutils is a set of free software command-line tools and software libraries for generating 2D plot graphics based on data sets. It is used in projects such as PSPP and UMLgraph, and in many areas of academic research, and is included in ...
package provides a free non-exact reimplementation, available for
Linux and many other systems.
It can create plots in various graphics formats.
Usage
In its simplest use, the graph utility takes a textfile containing pairs of numbers, indicating the points of a line plot.
It outputs the line plot. Several options can be supplied to modify its behavior.
Example (Unix)
Graph (SunOS 5.10) demo, part 1 of 2 - input and execution.png , Preparing example input and running graph with plot
Graph (SunOS 5.10) demo, part 2 of 2 - output.png , The results
These screenshots demonstrate basic operation on SunOS 5.10, on which graph and plot come preinstalled.
The example input is from the first example in the GNU plotutils manual.
Example (GNU plotutils)
Graph (Ubuntu 14.04 Linux) demo, part 1 of 2 - input and execution.png , Preparing example input and running graph in Tektronix mode
Graph (Ubuntu 14.04 Linux) demo, part 2 of 2 - output.png , The results
These screenshots demonstrate the GNU plotutils version of graph when run in an
xterm, exploiting xterm's ability to emulate a
Tektronix 4010 plotter.
This demo was run on
Ubuntu, which makes GNU plotutils available as an optional package; many other Linux distributions and other Unix-like systems do the same.
References
External links
{{Unix commands
Command-line software
Unix software