Get access to the default LineStyleOrder and ColorOrder arrays in MATLAB - matlab

Question

Quick "convenience" question for MATLAB users. I am looping over a plot command, passing it different data to plot each time. The data happens to be generated from a function call, which upon each iteration is passed a different parameter value. To plot everything on the same axis I am using the 'hold' function. Unfortunately this doesn't auto cycle through the available ColorOrder and/or LineStyleOrder plot parameters, so every line plotted has the same style on every iteration.
for i=1:nLines
[x_data y_data]=get_xy_data(param1(i),param2(i))
plot(x_data,y_data)
end
Every line plotted will be the default blue line style.
The obvious solution is to generate up front a cell array of the various line styles, and colors as in:
line_styles={'-','--','-*'}; %...etc
colors=colormap(jet(nLines));
then access each of those on every iteration. What I want is access to the default colors which will be generated from ColorOrder, and the default line cycling, which comes from LineStyleOrder. If I try something like:
get(gca,'LineStyleOrder')
This only returns the styles used in that axis (I've only tested this on an axis defined with one of the styles, but point is, it doesn't give me all possible linestyles). Help appreciated, thanks!
EDIT: Let me be more specific in what I am looking for.
figure; hold on;
for i=1:nLines
[xdata, ydata]=get_data(p1(i),p2(i)) % call some function to return x,y data
plot(xdata,ydata) % on i=1, default blue line
% function which tells matlab to get/set the next linestyle, color combination
nextStyle()
end
If this doesn't exist, it wouldn't be too hard to write it, but I thought I'd ask first before reinventing the wheel.

Answer 1

You may be interested in setting the default properties of DefaultAxesLineStyleOrder and DefaultAxesColorOrder.
The plots (style and color) will first loop through the newly defined colors and then changed the line style. In a successive plot loop, using hold all will "hold the graph and the current line color and line style so that subsequent plotting commands do not reset the ColorOrder and LineStyleOrder" (see the matlab doc). Both examples produce identical results.
%default properties (line style and color)
set(0,'DefaultAxesLineStyleOrder',{'--','-',':'})
set(0,'DefaultAxesColorOrder', summer(4))
figure('Color','w');
%example plot 1 (concurrent plots)
subplot(1,2,1);
yvals = [1:50;1:50]
plot(yvals, 'LineWidth', 2)
axis([1 2 0 size(yvals,2)+1 ]);
title('concurrent plot','FontSize',16);
%example plot 2 (iterative plots)
subplot(1,2,2);
for ii = 1:50
plot(yvals(:,ii), 'LineWidth', 2);
hold all;
end
axis([1 2 0 size(yvals,2)+1 ]);
title('successive plot','FontSize',16);
The results are
It looks like #Luis Mendo was not that wrong!

Answer 2

You can use hold all. That automatically sets different colors and linestyles for each plot.

Answer 3

You could set the line style and color directly for each line. Here's an example:
figure
hold on
nLines = 12;
line_styles={'-','--','-.'};
colors= hsv(nLines);
indexColors = 1;
indexLines = 1;
for i=1:nLines
xData = 1:10;
yData = rand(1,10);
h = plot(xData,yData);
ls = line_styles{indexLines};
c = colors(indexColors,:);
set(h,'color',c)
set(h,'LineStyle',ls)
if indexColors < length(colors)
indexColors = indexColors + 1;
else
indexColors = 1;
end
if indexLines < length(line_styles)
indexLines = indexLines + 1;
else
indexLines = 1;
end
end