semilog plot axis labels

I am trying to make a semilogy plot and it is giving me y-axis labels of 10^3, 10^4, 10^5....10^10 with tiny tics in between each. I want it to be 10^2, 10^4, 10^6...10^10 and without all the tiny ticks in between. I tried

ylim([10^2, 10^10]); 
set(gca, 'ytick', (10^2):(10^2):(10^10));

but when I run it matlab just says "busy" and then usually crashes. It doesn't do this when I don't try to change the labels it works fine. Any ideas what to do? Why is it crashing when I am just changing the labels?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

set(gca, 'ytick', 10.^(2:2:10));

Your expression (10^2):(10^2):(10^10) means to start at 10^2 and to add 10^2 each time until 10^10 is reached. That would be a vector of (10^8 + 1) ticks.

[Sean Smith]

Thank You!