How can I automatically set a plots xlabel and ylabel to the variable names of x and y, when x and y are structure fields?

I use matlab plots (such as scatter) on a daily basis for looking at data.

It is very tedious to set the xlabel and ylabel everytime so I wrote a small function to automatically set the labels to the variable name:

function myscatter(x,y)

scatter(x,y)

xname=inputname(1);
yname=inputname(2);

xlabel(xname);
ylabel(yname);

end

Then:

foo=(1:10)
bar=(1:10)
myscatter(foo, bar)

This creates a scatter plot where the x label is already named 'foo' and the y label is already named 'bar'.

This works great when x and y are just variables stored in the workspace.

However I generally work with tables or structures of data, and the function inputname will return blank when dot indexing is used, i.e: data.foo

What I would like is to be able to create a scatter plot with data from a table or structure and still have the x and y label automatically named.

If I enter:

data.foo=(1:10)
data.bar=(1:10)
myscatter(data.foo, data.bar)

I would like it to return the scatter plot with the x and y labels as 'foo ' and 'bar'?

[Image Analyst]

Why not

xlabel('foo');
ylabel('bar');

If you're going to refer to those field of data when you pass them into myscatter(), then you must already know what the field names are, so just use them.

[Samuel Mousley]

Because my x and y labels are not always 'foo' and 'bar', they're whatever variables I want to look at in the data.

I realise I'm being a bit lazy, but I will change the variables shown in the plot many times in quick succession as I look through my data, and it's tedious to set the x and y label every single time through that method.

Answer 1

[Sindar]

Assuming your data will always be in two fields of the same structure:

function myscatter(data,x_field,y_field, varargin )
    assert(isfield(data,x_field),'Field %s not found',x_field)
    assert(isfield(data,y_field),'Field %s not found',y_field)
    
    scatter(data.(x_field),data.(y_field),varargin{:});
    
    xlabel(x_field);
    ylabel(y_field);
end

For use like this:

data.foo=(1:10)
data.bar=(1:10)
myscatter(data,'foo', 'bar')

Similar or less typing in function call and allows passing field names as variables.

Bonus: it should accept any optional arguments that scatter does

[Samuel Mousley]

Thank you, that works well and as you say, actually cuts down the amount of typing.

I can also use the same approach to make it work with tables too!