Shell

The shell command spawns an interactive shell. To return to GNUPLOT, type logout if using VMS, exit or the END-OF-FILE character if using Unix, endcli if using AmigaDOS, or exit if using MS-DOS or OS/2.

A single shell command may be spawned by preceding it with the ! character ($ if using VMS) at the beginning of a command line. Control will return immediately to GNUPLOT after this command is executed. For example, in VMS, AmigaDOS, MS-DOS or OS/2,

     ! dir

prints a directory listing and then returns to GNUPLOT.

On an Atari, the ! command first checks whether a shell is already loaded and uses it, if available. This is practical if GNUPLOT is run from gulam, for example.