{"id":4507,"date":"2013-04-19T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/pick\/?p=4507"},"modified":"2013-04-19T09:00:48","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T13:00:48","slug":"manage-the-automatic-naming-of-your-figure-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/pick\/2013\/04\/19\/manage-the-automatic-naming-of-your-figure-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"Manage the (Automatic) Naming of Your Figure Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Brett<\/a>'s Pick this week is \"setname\"<\/a>, by Andrew Bliss<\/a>.<\/p>

Some of you may be familiar with my own togglefig<\/tt><\/a> function; it allows one to recall and reuse a figure by specifying its name. I find it extremely practical, and I use it almost on a daily basis. (It's particularly useful when you're iterating on a block of code separated into \"sections.\"<\/a> Andrew's setname<\/tt> makes a very nice companion to togglefig<\/tt>.)<\/p>

As of this writing, Andrew has 10 files on the Exchange, which have collectively been downloaded more than 500 times in the past 30 days. (Not too shabby!) Nonetheless, I don't believe any of his submissions have previously been recognized as a Pick of the Week. Until now.<\/p>

Ironically, the file of Andrew's that I am most enamored of is his least-downloaded.<\/p>

So what does Andrew's function do? If you've previously indicated a title for the axes in your figure, setname<\/tt> automatically renames the figure to match axes name. If you haven't titled your graphic, the function extracts a string from the x- and y- labels of the axes to construct a figure name.<\/p>

Consider, for example, this snippet of code:<\/p>

t = 0:pi\/64:8*pi;\nplot(t,sin(t)+rand(size(t)))\nxlabel('Time'<\/span>)\nylabel('Noisy Sine'<\/span>)\ntitle('Noisy Sinusoid'<\/span>)\n<\/pre>
This creates a figure not-so-usefully named \"Untitled\" (with a number appended to differentiate it from the other n<\/i> \"Untitled\" figures you've previously created.)<\/p>
\"\" <\/p>
Now issue the setname<\/tt> command (no arguments needed--it works by default on the current axes, though you may specify a non-default axes.) Now the figure is renamed to \"Noisy Sinusoid,\" and you can readily pick it out from all the other open figures.<\/p>
\"\" <\/p>
Alternatively, if you didn't explicitly provide a title, setname<\/tt> would automatically name the figure \"Time vs Noisy Sine.\" Now not only can I find the figure, I can easily reuse it:<\/p>
% Recall the previous figure...<\/span>\ntogglefig('Noisy Sinusoid'<\/span>)\nplot(t,cos(t)+rand(size(t)))\ntitle('Noisy Cosine'<\/span>)\n% ...and then rename the figure!<\/span>\nsetname\n<\/pre>
This is brilliant, Andrew...thanks! One suggestion: it would be really nice if I could pass to setname<\/tt> an argument ('all'?) that tells the function to rename all open figures. (For those times when I've lazily created 20 different 'Untitled' figures.)<\/p>
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments<\/a>. Or leave feedback for Andrew here<\/a>.<\/p>