How to stop loops or close figures in live scripts

I wanna use live scripts to run a loop updating an animation because this will allow to playback the animation. In the normal command window or m files one can use uicontrol to stop loops or close figures. But this doesn't seem to work for live scripts because whenever 'figure' is called, a figure will pop up, then this animation can't be playbacked anymore. How to not pop up the figure/animation and stop the loop or close the animation in live scripts?

[Umang Pandey]

Hi,

Can you share your code?

Answer 1

[Vaibhav]

Hi Feynman

You can use the "set" function to make the figure invisible and then only update the parts of the figure that need to be animated.

Refer to the below code snippet to create an animation within a Live Script, control its execution, and prevent the figure from popping up each time:

% Create the figure and make it invisible
fig = figure('Visible', 'off');

% Initialize the plot
x = linspace(0, 2*pi, 100);
y = sin(x);
plotHandle = plot(x, y);

% Create a flag for the loop condition
isAnimating = true;

% Create a uicontrol button to stop the animation
uicontrol('Style', 'pushbutton', 'String', 'Stop', ...
          'Position', [20 20 50 20], ...
          'Callback', 'isAnimating=false;');

% Make the figure visible before starting the loop
set(fig, 'Visible', 'on');

% Animation loop
while isAnimating
    y = sin(x + rand); % Update data
    set(plotHandle, 'YData', y); % Update the plot
    drawnow; % Redraw the figure
    
    % Check for interruption by the user
    if ~ishandle(fig) || ~isAnimating
        break; % Exit the loop if the figure is closed or the flag is set to false
    end
end

% Close the figure if the loop is stopped
if ishandle(fig)
    close(fig);
end

In the example above, the figure is initially created as invisible. Before the loop starts, the figure's visibility is turned on. The "Stop" button, when pressed, changes the "isAnimating" flag to "false", which stops the loop. The "drawnow" function is used to update the figure without forcing it to become the active window each time it updates.

Hope this helps!

[feynman feynman]

Hi Vaibhav Thank you so much for helping but when running it the figure pops up as a separate figure and nothing is shown on the output panel in my live script.