gnuplot and bash process substitution

Question

Does gnuplot allow bash process substitution?

In gnuplot I can do:

plot \"

But I can\'t get this to work:

Answer 1

The command following the < is executed with popen(), which uses /bin/sh (see man popen). So you must invoke bash explicitely in order to make use of the process substitution:

plot '< exec bash -c "join tmp1 <(join tmp2 tmp3)"' using 2:3

In your case with the single substitution the following would also do:

plot '< join tmp2 tmp3 | join tmp1 -' using 2:3