Display image from Graphviz without creating an intermediate file?

Question

I would like to display a graph without writing a file first.

Suppose I have a command foo that produces this on standard out:

digraph foogrph {
   a -> b;
   a -> c;
}

What I would like to do is pipe foo into dot and then pipe the results into a command that will display the image in a graphical environment.

foo | dot -Tpng | <display command>

I have found a workaround that involves temporary files. In OSX, I can do the following:

foo | dot -Tpng > temp && open temp

But I still have to remove the file from the filesystem.

How can I display an image that is being written to standard out?

Answer 1

With ImageMagick's display command, these work on Ubuntu 12.10 (and most likely other OSes, too):

dot abac.dot -Tsvg | display
dot abac.dot -Tpng | display

SVG has the advantage of smoothly scaling with the window (if that's what you want).

Answer 2

On OSX & iTerm2, you can do the following (assuming imgcat is installed)

dot abac.dot -Tpng | imgcat