LaTex in Matlab legend

I am trying to get my legend written in latex code, however I don't quite get most of the solutions I found when searching. My code is quite long, so I made a simplified version:
%
A= cos(tau)
l1 = sin(tau)
l2 = sin(tau + pi/8)
plot(tau, A, 'DisplayName', 'A(\tau)'), hold on
plot(tau, l1, 'HandleVisibility','off'), hold on
plot(tau, l2, 'DisplayName', 'l with $\eta_0 = \pi - \asin(\sqrt{K})$')
legend show
I have seen several solutions with legend(... 'interpreter', 'latex'), but I don't see how to incorporate that into my code. I have also seen some set(f,'defaulttextinterpreter','latex') but again I don't quite know how to use it and when I tried I only got an error.

 Accepted Answer

This will call the LaTeX interpreter correctly:
A= cos(tau)
l1 = sin(tau)
l2 = sin(tau + pi/8)
plot(tau, A, 'DisplayName', '$A(\tau)$'), hold on
plot(tau, l1, 'HandleVisibility','off'), hold on
plot(tau, l2, 'DisplayName', 'l with $\eta_0 = \pi - \asin(\sqrt{K})$')
hl = legend('show');
set(hl, 'Interpreter','latex')
You have an LaTeX syntax error in the third plot call (for ‘l2’). I will defer to you to solve that.

2 Comments

Thank you, that helped a lot.
As always, my pleasure.
See The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e (link) for more on LaTeX commands and formatting.

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More Answers (1)

Lazaros
Lazaros on 22 Apr 2025

0 votes

Matlab understands all the basic functions that amsmath would load in a latex document. So you can use _, ^, as well as commands like \sin, \lim and \frac{}{}. Some more examples are included in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TwChCWGllI , although the comments above cover you

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Asked:

on 8 Sep 2018

Answered:

on 22 Apr 2025

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