Set date limits into x-axis

Hi everyone,

I have created several plots into a single figure, but the problem is that the x-axis (dates) are not consistent with my data, so there are gaps between the beginning of the a-axis and the graphs' line and the end of graphs' line and the end of the x-axis. I applied the following code:

% I want to create the x-axis, that is the dates (432x1), ie. starting from 1979:01 to 2014:12
DateNumber = datenum(1979,1:432,1);
formatOut='mmmm-dd-yyyy';
date = datestr(DateNumber,formatOut);

% then I want to print the information in every y(:,i) into a graph by including the dates I created before.
% If y is a matrix 432x27, from 1979:01 to 2014:12, I just want to create the graph with this information 

y = randn(432,27);
figure()

xlength = 0.30;
ylength = 0.10;
xstart = [0.05 0.39 0.73];
ystart = [0.02 0.13 0.24 0.35 0.46 0.57 0.68 0.79 0.90];

hold on

for iy=1:9
    for ix = 1:3
        ind = ix + 3*(iy-1);
        coordinates = [xstart(ix) ystart(9-iy+1) xlength ylength];
        subplot('Position',coordinates);
        plot(DateNumber,ind*y(:,ind))
        drawnow
        datetick('x','mmm-yy','keepticks')
    end
end

I would appreciate any help.Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

[Peter Perkins]

MATLAB graphics underwent a major upgrade a few releases back, so it's hard to know exactly what your figure looks like without knowing what release you're on, or better yet seeing an example and a clear description of what you are trying to get. So I'm not sure what problem you are running into. As Adam says, I think maybe the root cause is that you have a bunch of small plots, with not enough room to properly label the time axis.

If you have access to R2016b, this makes a pretty nice plot of your data, see attached:

time = datetime(1979,1:432,1);
y = randn(432,27);
tt = array2timetable(y,'RowTimes',time)

ttplot(tt)

ttplot is on the File Exchange. If you're using something between R2014b and R2016a, you can still do that using a table (rather than a timetable), it's just not quite as immediate.

Answer 2

[Adam]

doc xlim

What is wrong with just using this to set the limits?

[gsourop]

All the examples are arithmetical in the x-axis and none is with dates.For example, I could use

   DateNumber = datenum(1979,1:432,1);
  formatOut='mmmm-dd-yyyy';
  date = datestr(DateNumber,formatOut);
  y = randn(432,27);
  figure()
  xlength = 0.30;
  ylength = 0.10;
  xstart = [0.05 0.39 0.73];
  ystart = [0.02 0.13 0.24 0.35 0.46 0.57 0.68 0.79 0.90];
  hold on
  for iy=1:9
      for ix = 1:3
          ind = ix + 3*(iy-1);
          coordinates = [xstart(ix) ystart(9-iy+1) xlength ylength];
          subplot('Position',coordinates);
          plot(DateNumber,ind*y(:,ind))
          drawnow
          datetick('x','mmm-yy','keepticks')
  xlim([722816 735934])    
  end
  end

but then x-axis give me only one point of time ''Sep-98'' and nothing else. So they split the sample into 2 parts and not 36 or 18 equal parts.

[Adam]

Well, you can set 'XTick' for your axes to whatever you want if you want more ticks, but when I run your code the plots are so small there isn't room for many ticks. I see three when I do it, but ticks are a different issue to limits - they are controlled by a totally different property of the axes.