Tweak legend entries without creating a new legend

I have created a plot with a legend and now I would like to edit legend entries without recreating the whole legend. For example, for five legend entries I would like to reorder them like

newOrder = [2 3 5 4 1];

I can reorder the entries by first getting current legend handles and strings like this:

[~,~,plot_h,text_strings] = legend;

And then I can reorder the entries like this:

legend(plot_h(newOrder),text_strings{newOrder})

However, this doesn't only reorder the legend; it seems to delete the legend I'd already created, with its perfect placement and color scheme, etc, and creates a new legend with entries in the correct new order. How can I edit these entries without screwing up the placement, colors, boxoff, etc that I've already set?

Answer 1

[Chad Greene]

I did not quite figure out how to edit an existing legend, but I did work up this function that does what I needed it to do.

[Ben11]

Nice! Sorry I kind of forgot to update this post.

Answer 2

[Rodrigo Bernal]

Edit a specific legend entry of an existing legend:

figu=gca;
figu.Legend.String(6)={'Edit the 6th legend'};

Answer 3

[Ben11]

Maybe assign a handle to your legend in the first place, eg

hLegend = legend(...);

and then change the String property with the new order:

set(hLegend,'String',newOrder);

This should only update the current legend without replacing it.

[Chad Greene]

That's the first solution I tried, but there are a couple of issues:

1. It'd have to be set(h,'string',text_strings(newOrder))

and

2. That changes the order of the strings without changing the order of the markers beside them. I want to keep the associations between strings and their data.

[Chad Greene]

Is there a legend property corresponding to 'String' for 'Data'? Then it would be a simple issue of

set(h,'String',text_strings(newOrder),'Data',plot_h(newOrder))