Adding error bars on a bar graph in gnuplot

Question

I have the following file I want to plot using gnuplot bar graphs:

Function X X-ERROR Y Y-ERROR
A 1.311539 0.066268 1.000000 0.000000
(a1,b0)  1.325429 0.083437 1.010926 0.016710
(a.9,.b1)  1.134640 0.040017 1.276168 0.060281
(a.8,.b2)  1.078336 0.058529 1.346358 0.054645
(a.7,.b3)  1.035866 0.060660 1.318395 0.018087
(a.6,.b4)  0.982717 0.047363 1.196714 0.047427
(a.5,.b5)  0.962423 0.051994 1.127991 0.044731
(a.4,.b6)  0.953673 0.046014 1.139608 0.044726
(a.3,.b7)  0.948948 0.050462 1.169209 0.044333
(a.2,.b8)  0.941013 0.047166 1.198138 0.045844
(a.1,.b9)  0.929961 0.057801 1.328111 0.088813
(a0,b1)  0.966331 0.036079 3.289381 0.213192
B  1.000000 0.000000 3.321802 0.121290

I can manage to plot the graph perfectly using:

plot 'file.dat' using 4:xtic(1) title col, \\
        '' using 2:xtic(1) title col;

However I would like to use columns 3 and 5 to represent the interval of confidence that I always calculated. Any help?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Assuming you want to draw side-by-side bar charts with associated error bars, I would use the following:

set xrange [-0.5:12.75]
set xtic rotate by -45
set boxwidth 0.25
plot 'file.dat' using ($0-.05):4:5:xtic(1) with boxerrorbars title col, \\
     '' using ($0+0.25):2:3 with boxerrorbars title col

The idea is just to offset one of the two measures on the x-axis.