Graphics, Figures & Tables ⇒ Tikz and multiple input files

[Anicka]

Hallo,

I want to make a plot with vectors going from the coordinate specified in file1 to the coordinate in file2. Can I do this with PGF/Tikz? (Making \draw (x1,y1) -- (x2,y2); is not an option, each file contains 200+ lines.) The files are in the format:
x1 y1
x2 y2
.
.
.

All ideas are welcome!

[shadgrind]

I'm assuming that your two files (call them file1 and file2) have the same number of lines, and in each file the two coordinates are separated by a single space. If so, then if you're on a UNIX-like system an easy way would be to use some UNIX shell utilities (paste and awk) in a terminal window:

Code: Select all

paste file1 file2 | awk '{print "\\draw[->] ("$1","$2") -- ("$3","$4");"}' > mycoords.tex

I tested that on a file1 with these 3 lines

Code: Select all

1 2
4 3
5 0

and a file2 with these 3 lines:

Code: Select all

7 8
10 9
11 0

and it produced the file mycoords.tex consisting of these TikZ commands:

Code: Select all

\draw[->] (1,2) -- (7,8);
\draw[->] (4,3) -- (10,9);
\draw[->] (5,0) -- (11,0);

You could then use \input{mycoords} inside a tikzpicture environment (or copy and paste the contents). There may be a slicker way of having TikZ do it programmatically, but this is my quick and dirty solution.

[Anicka]

Thanks!

I ended up doing something similar "by hand", using jedit to insert text by the column.