How to remove the y axis and tick marks but keep the tick label and axis label?

May I know how to remove the y axis and tick marks (marked with red arrow), but keep its label ('Run Number') and tick labels (1 to 6) as in the plot below?

My code:

fwdSpikeX was attached as mat file

ItrNum_fwd = 6;
runstart = -40.948564603973250;
runend = 40.948564603973250;
binWidth = 5;
binRange = -42.5:5:42.5;

% For each fwd run, plot the spike firing positions as raster plot, subplot 5
subplot(3,2,5);
for ff = 1:ItrNum_fwd
    NoSpikeFlag = isempty(fwdSpikeX{ff});
    if ~NoSpikeFlag
        plot(fwdSpikeX{ff}, ff, 'k.'); % Plot spikes as black dots along x axis
        hold on
    end % for NoSpikeFlag
end % for ff
x1 = runstart;
x2 = runend;
line([x1 x1], [0 ItrNum_fwd+1]); % Plot vertical line at runstart
hold on
line([x2 x2], [0 ItrNum_fwd+1]); % Plot vertical line at runend
hold on
axis([binRange(1) binRange(end) 0 ItrNum_fwd+1]);
ax = gca;
ax.Box = 'off';
ax.YDir = 'reverse';
ax.YTick = (1:1:ItrNum_fwd);
ax.YTickLabel = (1:1:ItrNum_fwd);
ax.XTick = (binRange(1):binWidth:binRange(end));
ax.XTickLabel = (0:binWidth:binRange(end) - binRange(1));
ax.TickDir = 'out';
ax.YLabel.String = ('Run Number');
ax.XLabel.String = ('Positions along X-axis');
drawnow

Thank you!

Here is my desired output:

Answer 1

[Benjamin Kraus]

You can remove the tick marks by setting the TickLength property on the axes to [0 0], but that will remove ticks from both the x and y axis, and unfortunately there is no way to remove the y-axis without also removing the tick labels.

Therefore, the best solution is to create your own tick labels, which is not as complicated as it sounds.

For example:

ax = axes;
plot(rand(100,1)+0.05,randi(6,100,1), '.')
ax.YLim = [0 7];
ax.YAxis.Visible = 'off';
ytickvalues = 1:6;
x = zeros(size(ytickvalues));
str = string(ytickvalues);
text(x, ytickvalues, str, 'HorizontalAlignment', 'right');
xline(0.05,'b')
box off