# bar chart with pgfplots

I am trying to create a bar chart with pgfplots. My code is similar to example :

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[h!]
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
ybar,
enlargelimits=0.15,
legend style={at={(0.5,-0.15)},anchor=north,legend columns=-1},
ylabel=something,
symbolic x coords={tool8,tool9,tool10},
xtick=data,
nodes near coords,
nodes near coords align={vertical}]
\addplot coordinates {(tool8,7) (tool9,9) (tool10,4)};
\addplot coordinates {(tool8,4) (tool9,4) (tool10,4)};
\addplot coordinates {(tool8,1) (tool9,1) (tool10,1)};
\legend{used,understood,not understood}
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption[TODO]{TODO}
\label{label}
\end{figure}
\end{document}


I get the error:

finished with exit code 1.

• Does that code give a bar chart if you run it?
• What could be the reason that it does not work for me?
• Wrong pgfplots version?

My output looks like this:

For each entry in coordinates I get

Package PGF Math Error: Could not parse input 'tool8' as a floating point number, sorry. The unreadable part was near 'tool8'..

I use Xubuntu 12.04 with Kile 2.1.0 and \pgfversion 2.10

Update:

If I remove the symbolic x coords it works fine. If I replace the toolx by a number I get:

Package pgfkeys Error: I do not know the key '/tikz/symbolic x coords' and I am going to ignore it. Perhaps you misspelled it.

• what is the rest of the error? Which system? What is your pgfplots version? I get the correct result. – percusse Jun 20 '16 at 15:03
• @percusse : I edited the question and included the answers to your questions. – Jonas Jun 20 '16 at 15:29
• Yes, both your pgfplots and tikz versions are outdated. You need to update your packages. – percusse Jun 20 '16 at 16:50
• thank you for your comments, I assumed that to be the problem. However I failed when I tried to update it, thats another question maybe.. For now the workaround I postet is sufficient for me – Jonas Jun 20 '16 at 17:11

As percusse pointed out the problem might be outdated versions of tikz and pgfplots.

However I got the result I wanted by a workaround:

file data.txt :

1, 99
2, 120
3, 80


tex code :

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}

\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[h!]
\centering
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]
\begin{axis}[
ybar,
xtick=data,
xmin=0.5,
xmax=3.5,
ymajorgrids=true,
bar width=1cm,
xlabel={something else},
xlabel style={yshift=-1cm},
xtick align=inside,
xticklabels={one bar, another bar , third bar},
ylabel={something},
x tick label style={font=\normalsize, rotate=45, anchor=east}
]
\addplot table [x index=0,y index=1, col sep=comma] {data.txt};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption[TODO]{TODO}
\label{label}
\end{figure}
\end{document}


result :