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## xticlabels

Axis tick labels can be generated via a string function, usually taking a data column as an argument. The simplest form uses the data column itself as a string. That is, xticlabels(N) is shorthand for xticlabels(stringcolumn(N)). This example uses the contents of column 3 as x-axis tick labels.

          plot 'datafile' using <xcol>:<ycol>:xticlabels(3) with <plotstyle>

Axis tick labels may be generated for any of the plot axes: x x2 y y2 z. The ticlabels(<labelcol>) specifiers must come after all of the data coordinate specifiers in the using portion of the command. For each data point which has a valid set of X,Y[,Z] coordinates, the string value given to xticlabels() is added to the list of xtic labels at the same X coordinate as the point it belongs to. xticlabels() may be shortened to xtic() and so on.

Example:

          splot "data" using 2:4:6:xtic(1):ytic(3):ztic(6)

In this example the x and y axis tic labels are taken from different columns than the x and y coordinate values. The z axis tics, however, are generated from the z coordinate of the corresponding point.

Example:

          plot "data" using 1:2:xtic( $3 > 10. ? "A" : "B" )

This example shows the use of a string-valued function to generate x-axis tick labels. Each point in the data file generates a tick mark on x labeled either "A" or "B" depending on the value in column 3.