Completion for Gnuplot under Ubuntu(/Debian) with rlwrap

20 April, 2007 - 14:46

The default install of gnuplot in Ubuntu/Debian does offer a crippled form of word completion, when compared to other distribution (Mandrake, Suse). For example, filenames can not be completed with pressing tab, which can be really annoying if you're used to have this sort of completion. The reason for this is some licensing issue with the readline library. A workaround is to compile Gnuplot with the right tweaks, but this is to much hassle for what it's worth for me.

Another solution, which can also be applied to other applications, is rlwrap. It's just a simple sudo apt-get install rlwrap away (with uni/multiverse repositories enabled).

Now I have filename completion in gnuplot with:

rlwrap -a -c gnuplot

And if you're not so keen on remembering this, just add the following alias to your .bashrc:

alias gnuplot='rlwrap -a -c gnuplot'

Nice.

22 September, 2011 - 11:41

this seems not work in mac OS

Juan (not verified)

I have been using fink, to debianize the Mac OS, so I installed
sudo fink install gnuplot. (sort of apt-get gnuplot).
Did the same for rlwrap, but the trick here show is not working for me at all.

Would you be kind enough to givem any advices?
Thanks
Juan

29 November, 2010 - 16:34

Great

Manuel (not verified)

Thanks a lot. It works fine!

16 April, 2009 - 14:53

I was looking for this

Kris (not verified)

I was looking for this command !

9 September, 2008 - 19:14

Cheers! Many thanks! exactly

Anonymous (not verified)

Cheers! Many thanks! exactly what I needed... was just about to
karate-chop my PC because gnuplot couldn't recognise the bloody
HOME, END keys :D

9 October, 2007 - 10:12

thanks

Anonymous

thanks for the helpful post, notice that completion will work with " rather than ' (post by tyusoff on Ubuntu General Help Forum)

16 July, 2007 - 19:54

bash alias

Anonymous

Thanks, that's exactly what I was after!

You can avoid having to type "rlwrap..." everytime you start gnuplot if you add the following to your .bashrc (assuming you use bash):

alias gnuplot='rlwrap -a -c gnuplot'

6 June, 2007 - 15:16

It is what i was looking for!

Anonymous

Many thanks your sharings.
ahd

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