Gnuplot legend order

Question

Does somebody know how I can change the order within the key without changing the order of the plot commands? By default, the key has the same ordering as the titles of the individual plots.

For example: I plot first an error-band with filledcu, then the mean value as a solid line. Now I have the error-band title on top (in the key), followed by the title of the solid line. But I want to have it the other way round.

best wishes

Answer 1

There's no way that I know of without resorting to ugly hacks... Here's one such ugly hack:

plot sin(x) with filledcurves notitle, \
     cos(x) with lines, \
     NaN with filledcurves title 'sin(x)' lc rgb "#ff0000"

Basically, we plot the first two plots as normal (except we remove the title from the first plot). Then we make a "null" plot (plot NaN) with the same style and title that you want in the key...

Answer 2

Just use

set key invert

to change the ordering of the key entries.