Re: Plotting in Guile

[Hans Aberg]

On 28 Jul 2010, at 19:54, Joel James Adamson wrote:

> > GNUPLOT seems to require pipes, if not using a file.
>
> The question from the IPC newbie (myself): is there something wrong  
> with
> pipes?  I've read a basic tutorial and they seem to do what I would
> need, but the author seemed to think they were worthless.  Educate me.

I'm no expert, but pipes are simple and effective, though somewhat  
limited, as one program must be the descendant of another. Bison uses  
a pipe to call M4, which works just fine, and you have a similar  
application. Earlier, it used the writing file variation, and there is  
a problem with cleanup.

> > > 2. My thoughts were that I could use the POSIX IPC modules available
> > > in
> > > Guile to run GNUPLOT and send commands through a pipe or other
> > > appropriate interface.
> >
> > Guile has a command scm_pipe() (see manual). It is not difficult to
> > link to C-code - that is a point of using Guile.
>
> So would I write a C program to handle the IPC between guile and
> GNUPLOT, and then control it with Scheme?

Guile has both scm_pipe() to use in a C program, and pipe to use in  
Scheme code. So you might try calling it directly. If you turn GNUPLOT  
into a library, you can link it directly to Guile.

  Hans