Pgfmath misbehaving when reading negative values from table in Pgfplots

Question

I am astonished that when I attempt to square a number read from a table with pgfplots, the result has the same sign. Consider this:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{pgfplotstable}
\begin{filecontents}{data.dat}
   col1 col2
   -1   -2
   0    -2
   2    -3
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
\pgfplotstableread[col sep=space]{data.dat}\datatable
\begin{tikzpicture}
   \begin{axis}[
         xtick=data,
      ]
      \addplot table[
         x expr=\coordindex,
         y expr={
            \thisrow{col2}^2
         }
      ] {\datatable};
   \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

col2s values are supposed to get squared \thisrow{col2}^2, but it appears as if \thisrow{col2} expands to e.g. -2 and the expression becomes -2^2 and is parsed as -(2^2). Also the second row seems to be wrong altogether. Is this behaviour intended and where is it documented? I find this grossly counterintuitive.

Answer 1

TeX expands \thisrow{col2} to -2, so what's eventually seen is

-2^2

which is, according to the usual conventions, -4. The same in the other cases.

Adding parentheses, as follows,

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{pgfplotstable}
\begin{filecontents}{data.dat}
   col1 col2
   -1   -2
   0    -2
   2    -3
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
\pgfplotstableread[col sep=space]{data.dat}\datatable
\begin{tikzpicture}
   \begin{axis}[
         xtick=data,
      ]
      \addplot table[
         x expr=\coordindex,
         y expr={
            (\thisrow{col2})^2
         }
      ] {\datatable};
   \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

produces