How do I draw a set of vertical lines in gnuplot?

alternatively you can also do this:

p '< echo "x y"' w impulse

x and y are the coordinates of the point to which you draw a vertical bar

From the Gnuplot documentation. To draw a vertical line from the bottom to the top of the graph at x=3, use:

set arrow from 3, graph 0 to 3, graph 1 nohead

Here is a snippet from my perl script to do this:

print OUTPUT "set arrow from $x1,$y1 to $x1,$y2 nohead lc rgb \'red\'\n";

As you might guess from above, it's actually drawn as a "headless" arrow.