Gnuplot, how to add a grid without ticks?

Question

I have something like:

set grid xtics lt 0 lw 1 lc rgb "#a9a9a9"
set grid ytics lt 0 lw 1 lc rgb "#a9a9a9"

or the same without the "xtics" tag, and that works fine! But if i add:

unset xtics

Then the grid disappears too :(

How can I only have a grid, without tics?

Answer 1

To hide the major ticks, you can use set tics scale 0:

set grid
set tics scale 0
plot x

Note, if one day you also want to use minor ticks and also hide them, you must use set tics scale 0,0.001.

Answer 2

If you only want to make the tic labels disappear then use set format:

set format x ""
set format y ""
set grid
plot x

If you don't want the tics either, then as far as I know you'd need a more complicated script, possibly using iterators and arrows, for example the following (you'll have to change the limits depending on your xrange and yrange and the arrow style to your liking):

unset xtics
unset ytics
set for [i=-5:5:5] arrow from i,-10 to i,10 nohead
set for [j=-5:5:5] arrow from -10,j to 10,j nohead
plot x