I want my function to ignore some inputs

Hello, I made a function called plotgeral that makes plots what I want with the format that I desire.

the 1st line of the function where i declare my outputs and inputs is:

out = plotgeral(Y,Y1,Y2,Y3,Y4,Y5,Xaxis title,Yaxis title,title,legend,legend1,legend2,legend3,legend4,legend5)

Sometimes I want to draw the plot with 6 inputs of data (Y -> Y5), but sometimes I just want the Y and Y1, for example. What should I do in this case? The name of Axis, title and legend are defined by me in the script with ' '.

I tried

out = plotgeral(Y,Y1,[],[],[],[],Xaxis title,Yaxis title,title,legend,legend,[],[],[],[])

but I get an error on the part of the legend, because [] it an invalid argument for the legend.

Thanks for your time.

[Dennis]

you can replace legend.... with varargin, this way your function can accept more or fewer input arguments.

But i want to suggest to pass all data as 1 variable or structure instead of naming your variables/legends Y1,Y2,Y3; legend1,legend2. You could add another dimension to Y (Y(:,1), Y(:,2)) and check in your function the size of Y in that dimension (numberofplots=size(Y,2)) and do the same with the legend.

If you are interested in more information why dynamically naming your variables is usually a bad idea i recommend having a look at this post:

https://de.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

function  plotgeral(Y,eixoX,eixoY,titulo,legenda)
    C = {'k','b','c','g','m','r'};
    original = figure();
    set(original,'PaperUnits','centimeters','PaperPosition',[0 0 29 21],'PaperOrientation','landscape');
    numberofplots=size(Y,2);
    hold on

      for ii=1:numberofplots
                 plot(Y(:,ii),'Color',C{ii},'Markersize',12);

      end

      set(gca,'FontSize',10);
      grid on
      title(titulo,'FontSize',12,'Color','black','FontWeight','bold');
      xlabel(eixoX);
      ylabel(eixoY);

      legend(legenda)
      ax = gca; % Eixos
      ax.XAxis.LineWidth = 1.5;
      ax.YAxis.LineWidth = 1.5;
      ax.GridLineStyle = '-';
  end

[Tiago Dias]

Thanks it works, had to change the colours to black yellow blue etc, the full name, just the letters for some reason gave me a problem.