Recent changes to 2844: 6.0.3: The `dt (n1,n2)` syntax makes it hard to use programmatically defined dashtype

#2844 6.0.3: The `dt (n1,n2)` syntax makes it hard to use programmatically defined dashtype

Ethan Merritt — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:44:08 -0000

status: open --> pending-fixed
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6.0.3: The `dt (n1,n2)` syntax makes it hard to use programmatically defined dashtype

Ilya Zakharevich — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 04:19:04 -0000

I want to use a calculated dashtype, but while dt k works, dt (k+1) does not. (With the message

                                                      ^
         expecting comma

)

And AFAIK, in other situation complicated expressions in gnuplot⸣s plot commands “should be” (?) put in parentheses. In some cases one can manage with abominations like k>15?1:k==6?2:0 — but sometimes the difficulties are not surmountable.

Is there a need to prohibit lists of length 1 (as in dt (k+1) — meaning the same as without the parens)?

(Knowing fine details of Perl tokenizer) I can see that dt +(k+1) works too. So as a stopgap, one could just document such syntax…

6.0.3: The `dt (n1,n2)` syntax makes it hard to use programmatically defined dashtype

Ilya Zakharevich — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 04:19:04 -0000

Ticket 2844 has been modified: 6.0.3: The dt (n1,n2) syntax makes it hard to use programmatically defined dashtype
Edited By: Ethan Merritt (sfeam)
Status updated: 'open' => 'pending-fixed'