Installing and Running Gnuplot on Ubuntu

Gnuplot is simple to install and use on Ubuntu systems as the latest version is included in the Ubuntu repositories. One part that is not included by default is auto complete at the gnuplot command line. In order to install gnuplot and enable auto complete, simply open a terminal, and type the following command

sudo apt-get install gnuplot rlwrap

UPDATE On Ubuntu 12.04 and later you need to specify what version of gnuplot to install (qt or x11), so change the command above to

sudo apt-get install gnuplot-qt rlwrap

Then open your bash configuration file (if using the default bash shell)

gedit ~/.bashrc &

and add the following lines to the file somewhere near the bottom

# enable autocomplete in gnuplot
alias gnuplot="rlwrap -a -c -b\"\\\"\\\"\\\'\\\'\" gnuplot"

save the file and exit.

First we need some data for plotting, for instance the file

http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~pjohnson/Gnuplot/testResults.dat

may be downloaded from my website.

Now open a new terminal and type gnuplot into the command line. You should see the following:

Now enter the following:

p 'te

and press the tab key. The filename should auto complete. If it does not appear press the tab key again as there might be multiple files beginning `te', and you might need to enter more letters to allow it to complete. If it is still not working, enter !ls and check that the file is present in your current working directory. Complete the gnuplot command to plot the file with lines and press return

p 'testResults.dat' w l

If it all works you should see: