by i have devised this kludge, in program1.gp i have:
soil=`echo $soil`
and i launch gnuplot from {,k,ba}sh like this:
% soil=3 gnuplot program1.gp
----------------------------------------------------------------------
it works also with filenames, e.g., if in program2.gp i have
set out `echo $file`
and launch gnuplot like this:
% file=\"graph.ps\" gnuplot program2.gp
a file `graph.ps' is written
----------------------------------------------------------------------
while it works, my method seems to me very kludgy... what i'd really
like in gp36 is a supported method to pass parameters values
% gnuplot -p soil=3 program1.gp
avoiding the soil=`echo $soil` in my programs
now that i'm daydreaming, if i had the above, i'd like also a
conditional assignment operator, to assign a default value to a
parameter if it is not set on the shell command line
thank you for your attention
gb