Reading from csv and plotting Date on x

Question

I am new to gnuplot and got stuck in plotting two trend lines. The file is tracking how investiments of two profiles: low and high risk. Now I want to plot a trend line, as in the below R base plot, but using gnuplot. My data file looks like:

date,investpercent,expenses,savings,low,high,objective
2015-09-25,5.0,1.0,2.0,1,2,2.0
2016-09-25,6.0,1.0,2.0,1,2,2.0
2017-09-26,6.0,1.0,2.0,2,4,2.0
2018-09-27,5.0,40.0,60.0,10,40,-49904.0
2018-09-27,5.0,40.0,60.0,20,50,-169960.0

set key autotitle columnhead
plot '~/Downloads/finances.csv' using 1:5

I am using autotitle because of the header in the first line, it removes an error, but obviously sets a title, which I don't need. It would be nice to know how to ignore the headers too.

My question is:

• How can I plot the trend using the values on columns 5 and 6 in y using dates as the x axis using gnuplot?

Answer 1

You could try this:

set key autotitle columnhead
set key top left
set datafile separator ","
set timefmt '%Y-%m-%d'
set xdata time
plot 'test.txt' using 1:5 w l t 'low',  'test.txt' using 1:6 w l t 'high'

which yields: