Format

The default binary format is a float. For more flexibility, the format can include details about variable sizes. For example, format="%uchar%int%float" associates an unsigned character with the first using column, an int with the second column and a float with the third column. If the number of size specifications is less than the greatest column number, the size is implicitly taken to be similar to the last given variable size.

Furthermore, the format specification can include "discarded" terms via the * character. For example, to skip the middle column of the previous example, one could write format="%uchar%*int%float" and gnuplot will discard the middle integer. To list variable sizes, type show datafile binary datasizes. There are a group of names that are machine dependent along with their sizes in bytes for the particular compilation. There is also a group of names which attempt to be machine independent.