Xticklabels remaining fixed when replotting with different x values

I have a plot that I manually scale. I also want to adjust the fontsize of the ticklabels. so my code is:

xlim([0 xdata(end)])
a = get(gca,'XTickLabel');
set(gca,'XTickLabel',a,'FontName','Helvetica','fontsize',6);

But, say my first plot has 1600 points, all is well. But when I perform the same plot with say 400 points of data, the graph displays correctly but the ticklabels still read upto 1600.

[Jason]

It seems if I replace the following it works, not sure why?

% a = get(gca,'XTickLabel');
% set(gca,'XTickLabel',a,'FontName','Helvetica','fontsize',6);
set(gca,'FontSize',6,'FontName','Helvetica')

Answer 1

[Thorsten]

If you just want to change the size of the font, use

set(gca, 'FontSize', 6);

If you want to set different XTickLabels, use

set(gca, 'XTickLabel', whatever_labels_you_want)

There is no reason to first get the property of the current axis and next set it to its value, like in

   a = get(gca,'XTickLabel');
   set(gca,'XTickLabel',a)

You just set the values to what they already are.

Presumably you have used a value of "a" from a previous run with the labels running up to 1600 and then you used this "a" for your smaller plot with just 400 points, and so you got the labels wrong.