I modified near line 1581 to accept a relative path and then convert it to a canonical absolute path to gnuplot exe: boost::filesystem::path canonicalPath = boost::filesystem::canonical( boost::filesystem::path(in) ); //SLN enables relative path to bin as input //FILE *fh = GNUPLOT_POPEN(cmd.c_str(), "w"); //commented out by SLN 1 Nov 2017 FILE *fh = GNUPLOT_POPEN(canonicalPath.string().c_str(), "w"); if(!fh) throw(std::ios_base::failure("cannot open pipe "+cmd)); return FileHandleWrapper(fh, true); }