How to make points one color when a third column equals zero, and another color otherwise, in Gnuplot?

Question

I need to vary the point color for a row of values based on the color in one column. The data:

# x y z 1, 3, 0   1, 5, 6   3, 5, 2   4, 5, 0 

The color should be one value if the column is zero and a different color if the value in the third column is non-zero.

So, I'm assuming:

plot "./file.dat" u 1:2:3 with points palette 

as found here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4115001 will not quite work.

In the above example data, that gnuplot command provides three different colors instead of the two I'm looking for.

Answer 1

This is probably close to what you want:

set palette model RGB defined ( 0 'red', 1 'green' ) plot[0:5][0:6] "file.dat" u 1:2:( $3 == 0 ? 0 : 1 ) with points palette 

You could go one step further and remove the "noise":

unset key unset colorbox plot[0:5][0:6] "file.dat" u 1:2:( $3 == 0 ? 0 : 1 ) with points pt 7 ps 3 palette 

if only the differentiation between zero and non-zero matters.