plotting a .xls spreadsheet

General-purpose script for plotting spreadsheets. You can plot multiple variables, select the plotting range and also the plotting conditions:

xlsplot( [xls file], [x variable], [y1 variable], [y2 variable], ....,
[condition 1], [condition 2], ..., options )
if the first ROW of the spreadsheet has a header line then variables are specified
by just partial unambiguous header titles, e.g. 'x column' or 'x col'
if the spreadsheet has no header titles, then use standard EXCEL headers,
such as 'A', 'B', ..., 'AA', 'AB', ...
to specify a variable in an expression use double quotes in the argument string,
i.e. '"x col"+"y col"' or 'hypot( "x col" + "y col" )'
to restrict the plotted dataset you can use logical commands, i.e.
'"x col">0'
you can also search for text strings within rows, i.e. 'good' or 'selec'
you can also specify which rows you want to plot using the syntax 'ROW
[r1, r2, r3...]'

to test this out, download the example XLS file called 'test.xls' and try
these commands

to turn off notifications about your plot, set options = 'QUIET'
to plot data where the x-values are sorted in ascending order, set options
= 'SORT'

[{plot handle}, {x variable}, {y1 variable}, {y2 variable}...] = xlsplot(...
returns the plot handle, and the data vectors used in the plot
*************************************************************
save this as spreadshet test.xls to run the following examples
a1 b c comment
1 1 1 good
3 9 9 bad
4 12.66666667 16 good
5 16.66666667 25 good
6 20.66666667 36 good
2 4 4 good

clf; xlsplot( 'test.xls', 'a1', '"b".^2', 'good' )
clf; xlsplot( 'test.xls', 'a1', '"b".^2', 'SORT' )
clf; xlsplot( 'test.xls', 'a1', '"b".^2', 'ROW [4:10]' )
clf; xlsplot( 'test.xls', 'a1', '"b".^2', '"a">3' )
clf; xlsplot( 'test.xls', 'a1', '"b".^2', '"a">3', 'QUIET' )
clf; set( xlsplot( 'test.xls', 'a1', '"b".^2', 'good' ), 'marker', 'o', 'color', 'r' )