bar chart with pgfplots

Question

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.

Answer 1

As percusse pointed out the problem might be outdated versions of tikz and pgfplots.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