A command-line statistics and plotting tool.

plot works on input streams and so if you have a file called data.txt which looks like:

$ head -n4 data.txt
11.01821751894866
-3.862915996857989
4.293330805873133
2.6587850003804734

then you can plot a histogram of that with

$ cat data.txt | plot hist

which will output something like:

12-|                                   ----
   |                                   |  |
   |                       -------     |  |
   |                       |  |  |     |  |
   |                       |  |  |     |  |
   |                       |  |  |     |  |
   |                       |  |  |     |  |
   |                       |  |  |  ---|  |---
   |                       |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |                       |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 8-|                       |  |  |  |  |  |  |---
   |                       |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |                       |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |                       |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |                       |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |                    ---|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |---
   |                    |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |                 ---|  |  |  |--|  |  |  |  |  |
   |                 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |                 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 4-|                 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |        ----
   |                 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |        |  |
   |                 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |------  |  |
   |                 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |                 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |---        ----  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |--|  |
   |  |        |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |  |  ----  |  |--|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
   |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
  0+------------------------------------------------------------
       |           |           |          |           |
      -10         -5           0          5          10

Likewise, if you have a data file (or any pipeable stream) which has a two-column format like:

$ cat data2.txt
-3 2.3
-1.6 5.3
0.3 0.7
4.3 -1.4
6.4 4.3
8.5 3.7

then you can draw a scatter plot of data using

$ cat data2.txt | plot scatter

which outputs:

  |        o
  |
  |
4-|                                              o
  |                                                        o
  |
  |
  |
  |  o
2-|
  |
  |
  |                 o
  |
0-|
  |
  |
  |
  |                 o
  +------------------------------------------------------------
                   |                  |                  |
                   0                  4                  8