Plot with 'SeriesIndex' set to 1 forces all lines in the plot call to have the same color and not iterate the color order

matrix=linspace(0,1,100)'*[1:4];

matrix2=linspace(0,1,102)'*(0.5+[1:4]);

figure; plot(matrix); hold on; plot(matrix2,'--') % try1

figure; plot(matrix); hold on; plot(matrix2,'--','SeriesIndex',1) % try2

For plot(matrix) automatically 4 lines are drawn with 4 distinct colors.

By using #try1

I get 8 lines with 7 distintc colors.

However, I would like to get matrix2 use the same colors as matrix 1 (since they indicate same physical meaning).

By using #try2

I get all lines of matrix2 just turned into blue.

IS there a simple way (e.g. not requiring to know in advance how many lines will be plotted, and how many plots are required following the hold on - so it should be automatic) to do that? I thought that 'SeriesIndex',1 should have handled that, but I guess I missunderstood its functionality.

Answer 1

[Amichai Sanderovich]

Hi,

Thank you for the suggestion. It seems to do the work indeed.

However, I found a solution with a lower line count:

set(gca,'ColorOrderIndex',1);

before each plot command.

which does the same.

Answer 2

[Voss]

matrix=linspace(0,1,100)'*[1:4];
matrix2=linspace(0,1,102)'*(0.5+[1:4]);

figure;
h1=plot(matrix);
hold on;
h2=plot(matrix2,'--');
set(h2,{'Color'},get(h1,'Color'))

[Amichai Sanderovich]

Nice solution. Will it survive different number of lines in h1 & h2?

[Voss]

It won't work if h1 and h2 are not the same size (i.e., numel(h1) ~= numel(h2)), but you can adjust it to handle that:

matrix=linspace(0,1,100)'*[1:6];
matrix2=linspace(0,1,102)'*(0.5+[1:4]);

figure;
h1=plot(matrix);
hold on;
h2=plot(matrix2,'--');

nh1 = numel(h1);
nh2 = numel(h2);
c = get(h1,'Color');
if nh2 <= nh1
    % set the colors of h2 to be the first nh2 colors of c
    set(h2,{'Color'},c(1:nh2))
else
    % set the colors of the first nh1 lines in h2 to c
    set(h2(1:nh1),{'Color'},c)
end

[Voss]

@Amichai Sanderovich: Good enough?