Re: Plotting double precision

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Jacques Basson (jfb37@NOSPAM.cam.ac.uk) writes:

> Does anyone know how I can plot double precision values in IDL. The plot
> routine help says:
> 
> Plots created with PLOT are limited to the range and precision of
> single-precision floating-point values.
> 
> Unfortunaltely, this means that values which do not lie in the
> +-10^(+-38) range can't be easily plotted. Of course as luck would have
> it, my values are of the order 10^(-39), and I'd rather not have factors
> of 10 in my labels. The other option would be to take logs before
> plotting rather than using the /ylog keyword, but I prefer the axis
> label to have the value of the variable, rather than its log.

How you plot the data and how you label the axes are
really two separate issues. They appear causally
connected only because most of us are lazy enough to let
IDL do the labelling from the data. But it doesn't have
to be that way at all. Investigate some of the keywords
that are available for the PLOT command. I would start with
[XYZ]Tickname, [XYZ]TickV, and maybe [XYZ]Tickformat.

Cheers,

David
-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
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