MATLAB: Adding legend in a plot genereted by a loop

2d plotsfor loopslegends

Hello everyone
i have a lot of x,y data sets that i would like to plot. The data sets are stored in a cell structure so that
  • DataFiles(1,1) is the first data set i imported
  • DataFiles(1,2) is the second
  • DataFiles(1,1).data(:,2) is all the y values of the first data set
and so on. the names of the data sets are furthermore stored in OutFiles so that
  • OutFiles(1,1).name is the name of the first data set
  • OutFiles(2,1).name is the name of the second data set
and so on. because i would like to plot all the x,y data set togehter i wrote a loop. the code is shown below
figure( 'Name', 'Reduced data' );
title('Reduced Raw data')
cc = jet(length(OutFiles)); % creates colormap
% log-lin plot
subplot(2,1,1)
h1 = subplot(2,1,1);
set(h1, 'xscale', 'lin')
set(h1, 'yscale', 'log')
xlabel('Q (Å^{-1})','fontsize',14)
ylabel('Detector counts in 1 sec.')
hold on
for k = 1:length(OutFiles)
    plot(DataFiles{1,k}.data(:,1),DataFiles{1,k}.data(:,2), 'color', cc(k,:)); 
end
+ the other subplot which is just a log-log plot of the same
My problem is that i cannot figure out how i can include the legends in the plot. i have tried include "legend" in the loop so that the loop code becomes
for k = 1:length(OutFiles)
      plot(DataFiles{1,k}.data(:,1),DataFiles{1,k}.data(:,2), 'color', cc(k,:)); 
      legend(OutFiles(k,1)
  end
but this does not work. Simply adding legend(OutFiles) also does not work but OutFiles also contains more information than ".name". i thought about making an array of the names "Legend(1,length(OutFiles))" but i do not know how to make an array of strings. i tried using
>> Legend=zeros(1,10); >> Legend(1,8) = 'test' Subscripted assignment dimension mismatch.
but as you can see i cannot add a string to an array
does anyone have a suggestion on how to add legends to plots made using a loop? any help will be greatly appreciated 🙂

Best Answer

hi, you plot all the data first, and then manipulate the Legend using per example cells as shown below :
 for k = 1:length(OutFiles)
      plot(DataFiles{1,k}.data(:,1),DataFiles{1,k}.data(:,2), 'color', cc(k,:)); 
end
 Legend=cell(2,1)%  two positions 
 Legend{1}=' Your data 1' ;
 Legend{2}=' Your data 2';
 legend(Legend);
In case there are many legends, like N plots, then you do :
 Legend=cell(N,1)
 for iter=1:N
   Legend{iter}=strcat('Your_Data number', num2str(iter));
 end
 legend(Legend)
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