String X-axis for bar plus line plot

Hello everyone, I'm having a hard time trying to setup my string-based X-axis for a plot which consists of a bar plot which refers to the left Y axis and a line plot which refers to the right one. Furthermore, I'm trying to generate this kind of plot in a script so I need my code to be "as general as possible". Here an example of the kind of plot I'm looking for

Concerning the X-axis, I have 9 elements to which one bar and one line point correspond to. These elements are nothing but the filename of files that I have previously imported via importdata. These are store in a 1x9 structure and can be access via "data_file(ii).name". I managed to store them as well in a 1x9 cell if needed (i.e. name={'tom','john'...}). Both the bar data (bar_data) and line data (line_data) are store in two different 1x9 double vectors. So far this is the closest I got toward what I need:

    hold on;
       yyaxis left
       bar(bar_data)
       yyaxis right
       plot(line_data)
       set(gca, 'XTickLabel',{'Tom','John','a','b','c','d','e','f','g'})
       hold off;

This is what I got:

Regardless the outlook of the graph, I need to correct the following features:

• 1st, the X labeling should start with "Tom" laying under the first blue bar and finishing with "g" laying under the last blue bar
• 2nd, whenever I try to set the X-axis labels in a "more general way" (i.e. not writing the label one by one but rather using a for cycle "for ii=1:9") the whole plot got screwed. As mention previously, this plotting operation is part of a script so I need to generate such a plot with a "general code".

I need to fix these things... Thanks in advance for you help.

Mattia

PS: the bar_data values as well as line_data change every time the script is run along with the number of element and the "Xlabels".

PPS: is there a way to tilt the label in case this later are too long?

Answer 1

[Rik]

You need to explicitly set the XTick property as well. To rotate the labels, you can use the XTickLabelRotation property.

[Mattia Pasquali]

Thanks Rik for your tip. Unfortunately, I'm already in trouble with XTickLabel when I try to put in string in a "general way", can you please specify with more details how to set Xtick in my case?

[Rik]

Something like this?

hold on;
yyaxis left
bar(bar_data)
yyaxis right
plot(line_data)
set(gca, 'XTickLabel',{'Tom','John','a','b','c','d','e','f','g'})
set(gca, 'XTick',1:9)%unless you specify x-values in plot and bar
set(gca, 'XTickLabelRotation',45)
hold off;

[Mattia Pasquali]

That's exactly what I meant! Thanks a lot for your help.

Actually, by creating the string cell for XTickLabel through a for loop, I was able to get what I wanted.

Just for information:

a=cell(1,9);
for ii=1:9
a{ii}=[data_file(ii).name]
hold on;
yyaxis left
bar(bar_data)
yyaxis right
plot(line_data)
set(gca, 'XTickLabel',a)
set(gca, 'XTick',1:9)%unless you specify x-values in plot and bar
set(gca, 'XTickLabelRotation',45)
hold off;
end

[Rik]

You can end the loop just after the assignment to a, the outcome will be identical, without the need to call bar 9 times.

And you're welcome of course.

[Mattia Pasquali]

I definitely mess up with that "end" while copy paste