Compatibility issue between gnuplot 4.1 and 4.6

Question

Coworkers have a lot of old-fashion gnuplot scripts working fine with gnuplot 4.1. It would be neat to update to 4.6 to get the for-loop functionality and the beauty of new terminals.

• Have you ever faced compatibility issue while updating gnuplot ?
• Is there something to add to ~/.gnuplot to ensure backward compatibility ?

Thank's for your help, I have to convince coworkers that this is a safe transition.

Note : A change of behavior is described in (gnuplot script fails - has there been a change in defaults from 4.4 to 4.6) column header. This is an examples of troubles you may have encountered, that kind of glitch I have to take into account and warn people about.

Answer 1

The amount of effort to update the scripts really depends on how many tricks your coworkers use which exploit bugs that were later patched in gnuplot. In my experience (almost) anything that works in gnuplot 4.0 works in 4.6/4.7, just not the other way around.