Different size error bar caps

I wish to make a bar chart with 5 bars with error bars on only two of these bars. My current code is

bounds=categorical({'aa','bb','cc','dd','ee'});

vals=[1,2,3,4,5]

 set(gca,'TickLabelInterpreter','latex','Fontsize',18);
 ylabel('Variance','Fontsize',20)
% 
% pause(2)
colors = [0 0 1; 
    1 0 0; 
    1 0 0; 
    0 1 0; 
    0 1 0];
alphas = [1,0.3,1,0.3,1]; 
b = gobjects(size(bounds)); 
cla()
hold on
for i =1:numel(bounds)
    b(i)=bar(bounds(i),vals(i));
    if rem(i,2)==0
        line='--';
    else
        line='-';
    end
        
    set(b(i),'FaceColor',colors(i,:),'FaceAlpha',alphas(i),'LineStyle',line); 
end
 ehigh=[0,0.5,0,0.8,0]
 elow=ehigh;
 hold on
 er = errorbar(bounds,vals,elow,ehigh,'k','LineStyle','none');    
 er.Color = [0 0 0];                            
 er.LineStyle = 'none';  
 er.LineWidth=1;
 er(1).CapSize=20;
 

which almost does what I want, however I can still see the zero error bar in the three bars with no error. I can get rid of this by setting the capsize to 0 but I don't really want this as then I have no caps on the error bars that I do want. Is there a way to set the error bar cap sizes differently for each point?

Or equally good would be a way to only have error bars on certain bars.

Many thanks!!

Answer 1

[Prudhvi Peddagoni]

Hi Lorcan,

You can set the linewidth for both bar and error bar to 1. So that you won’t see the thickness on the bars that you don’t want to see the error bars on.

Other thing to do is to declare another set of bounds and vals variables so that you can specify error bars for only those two bars like this.

ehigh = [0.5,0.8]; 
elow = ehigh; 
hold on; 
bound = [bounds(2) bounds(4)]; 
values = [vals(2) vals(4)]; 
er = errorbar(bound, values, elow, ehigh, 'k', 'LineStyle', 'none'); 

Hope this helps.

[Lorcan Conlon]

This is perfect Prudhvi, thank you!