How to plot a matrix containing NaN?

I have a MATLAB 2-D array which I want to plot which contain only 2 numbers : 0 and 1. It also contains a few NaNs. I want to plot it. The 2-D array is like this:

A=[1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
0	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	0	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	1
1	0	1	NaN
1	1	1	1];

I used the following code trying to plot it:

pcolor(1:4,1:29,A);
colorbar;

But it is not showing NaNs. Also, it is only showing results till the first 3 columns of the 2-D array. Can someone help me with it?

Answer 1

[Dave B]

pcolor specifies color at the vertex, which (confusingly) means that you have one less row and column. It does great with NaN though, marking them as white regardless of the colormap. You can pad your array and see everything, NaN's won't be indicated in the colorbar:

A = getA; % putting it in a function so it's not at the top of the answer
pcolor(padarray(A,[1 1],'post'))
colorbar

Alternatively you can use image (or imagesc) but you might need to do something special with your colormap to differentiate NaN and 0:

imagesc(A)
colormap([1 1 1;lines(2)]);
caxis([-1 1]); % NaN indicated 'below' the bottom value
c=colorbar;
c.Ticks=[-2 0 2]./3;
c.TickLabels={'NaN' '0' '1'};
xticks(1:4); % note that image's ticks are aligned to the faces, pcolor's are aligned to the vertices

Note that imagesc and pcolor do something different with the direction of the y axis. you can use set(gca,'YDir', ...) to set it how you like it or axis xy/axis ij

function A=getA
A=[1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
0	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	0	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	1
1	0	1	NaN
1	1	1	1];
end

[Abhishek Chakraborty]

How can I overlay stipple on the same plot? I have another array of the same dimensions, Z and I want to add its mask as data of Z below 0.05. I tried this:

x=1:28; y=1:31; [X,Y]=meshgrid(x,y);
mask=Z<0.05;
stipple(X,Y,mask);

Unfortunately, this code is not working because just like pcolor, stipple also interpolates the data.

[Walter Roberson]

Is that stipple() from https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/68607-stipple ?

[Abhishek Chakraborty]

Yes.

[Dave B]

is the goal here to produce just one dot for each location where Z<.05? I don't know stipple well, is it producing many dots for each square or just one?

Could you do something like (one dot/square case): scatter(X(mask(:)),y(mask(:)),'k','filled')

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

Colors were chosen arbitrarily. Black is the 0's, orange is the 1's, yellow is the nan.

A=[1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
0	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	0	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	NaN
1	1	1	1
1	0	1	NaN
1	1	1	1];

alpha = double(~isnan(A));

imagesc(A, 'AlphaData', alpha);
colormap([0 0 0; .9 .5 .3])
set(gca, 'color', 'y')

[Abhishek Chakraborty]

Thanks a lot!