8.1 Configuration Files

Configuration files for PyXPlot have the filename .pyxplotrc, and may be placed either in a user’s home directory, in which case they globally affect all of that user’s PyXPlot sessions, or in particular directories, in which case they only affect PyXPlot sessions which are instantiated with that particular directory as the current working directory. When configuration files are present in both locations, both are read; settings found in the .pyxplotrc file in the current working directory take precedence over those found in the user’s home directory. Configuration files are read only once, upon startup, and subsequent changes to the configuration files do not affect copies of PyXPlot which are already running.

Changes to settings made in configuration files affect not only the values that these settings have upon startup; they also changes the values to which the unset command returns settings. Thus, whilst the command

unset multiplot

ordinarily turns off multiplot mode, it may turn it on if a configuration file contains the line

MultiPlot=On

When coloured terminal output is enabled, the colour-coding of the show command also reflects the current default configuration: settings which match their default values are shown in green1 whilst those settings which have been changed from their default values are shown in amber2.

Configuration files should take the form of a series of sections, each headed by a section heading enclosed in square brackets. Each section heading should be followed by a series of settings, which often take the form of

Setting_Name = Value

In most cases, neither the setting name nor the value are case sensitive.

The following sections are used, although they do not all need to be present in any given file, and they may appear in any order:

Footnotes

  1. This colour can be changed using the Colour_Rep setting in a configuration file.
  2. This colour can be changed using the Colour_Wrn setting in a configuration file.