Does axes() return anything?

f2 = figure; 
a1 = axes('Parent',f2);

What is a1?

[Stephen23]

The axes documentation explains that the output is a handle to the axes object:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/axes.html

You can read more about graphics handles here:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/learn_matlab/understanding-handle-graphics-objects.html

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MATLAB_Programming/Handle_Graphics

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

The ‘a1’ variable is a ‘handle’ to the axes object.

In (I hope) more understandable terms, it shows all the properties of the axes of ‘f2’. This is useful if you want to find out what they are, and more usefully, to change them after the figure was plotted. This is particularly important if you want to change the tick positions, tick labels, or other characteristics of the axes object.

To see all the properties, add this line after the ‘a’ assignment:

a1_detail = get(a1)

Answer 2

[the cyclist]

Pure speculation here. Were you actually intending to return the parent object of f2? In that case you want

get(f2,'Parent')

or

f2.Parent

[Walter Roberson]

Probably not. axes('Parent', f2) is the proper syntax for creating a new axes whose parent is f2 .