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LineSpec

to quickly customize the lines appearance in a plot

Description

The LineSpec is an optional argument that can be used inside a plot command to customize each new line aspect. It has to be given as a concatenated string containing information about color, line style or markers. It is very useful to quickly specify such basic line properties.

To specify a red longdash-dot with diamond marker, the string can be 'r-.diam'. As you can see, a full complete spelling of each property value is not required but the string, which is a concatenation (in any order) of these three types of properties, must remain unambiguous. Furthermore, the string specification is not case sensitive.

Here is a complete list of the LineSpec types you can specify (using plot).

LineStyle:

a string defining the line style. This property is linked to the object's line_style property (see polyline properties).

Specifier Line Style
- Solid line (default)
-- Dashed line
: Dotted line
-. Dash-dotted line
Color:

a string defining the line color. This property is linked to the object's foreground property (see polyline properties).

Specifier Color
r Red
g Green
b Blue
c Cyan
m Magenta
y Yellow
k Black
w White

A default color table is used to color plotted curves if you do not specify a color (neither with LineSpec nor with GlobalProperty). When drawing multiple lines, the plot command automatically cycles through this table. Here are the used colors:

R G B
0. 0. 1.
0. 0.5 0.
1. 0. 0.
0. 0.75 0.75
0.75 0. 0.75
0.75 0.75 0.
0.25 0.25 0.25
Marker type:

A string defining the marker type. Note that if you specify a marker without a line style, only the marker is drawn. This property is linked to the object's mark_style and mark_mode properties (see polyline properties).

Specifier Marker Type
+ Plus sign
o Circle
* Asterisk
. Point
x Cross
'square' or 's' Square
'diamond' or 'd' Diamond
^ Upward-pointing centered triangle
v Downward-pointing centered triangle
> Right-pointing centered triangle
< Left-pointing centered triangle
'pentagram' or 'p' Five-pointed star (pentagram)
^. Upward-pointing triangle
v. Downward-pointing triangle
>. Right-pointing triangle
<. Left-pointing triangle
'minus' or 'm' Horizontal line (Minus sign)
| Vertical line
No marker (default)

Examples

clf();
x=1:0.1:10; // Init.
plot(x,sin(x),'r-.>') // plots a dash-dotted line with a right-pointing triangle centered on each points.
clf();
x=1:0.1:10;
// If you specify a marker without a line style, only the marker is drawn
plot(x,sin(x),'d')
clf();
x = 1:0.5:10; // Init.
// The order of information about color, line style or markers does not matter
// BUT the information must be unambiguous
subplot(311);plot(x,sin(x),'.b-');
subplot(312);plot(x,sin(x),'b.-');
subplot(313);plot(x,sin(x),'b-.');// The point belongs to information about line style (not marker!)
//multiple plots with different LineSpecs
clf();
t=0:%pi/20:2*%pi;
plot(t,sin(t),'ro-.',t,cos(t),'cya+',t,abs(sin(t)),'--mo')

See also

  • color — returns the color id of a color
  • GlobalProperty — customizes the objects appearance (curves, surfaces...) in a plot or surf command
  • plot — 2D plot
  • clf — Clears and resets a figure or a frame uicontrol
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Last updated:
Thu Oct 24 11:13:09 CEST 2024