Changing length of bar in legend

Here is discussed how to change the length of the bar in Legend axes, when a bar graph is plotted.

But how do you apply the code discussed there to a bar graphs with multiple bars per x tick?

For example on,

bar([1,2;3,4]) 
legend('one','two')

Thanks!

Answer 1

[Kelly Kearney]

It can be done pretty easily with my legend-reformatting function, legendflex:

 bar([1,2;3,4]);
 legendflex(gca, {'one','two'}, 'xscale', 0.5)

[Steven]

Great! I wasn't aware of this function.. Thanks!

I do get an error message though:

Undefined function 'legendflex' for input arguments of type 'cell'.

I am using 2012b, so copied the file 'legendflex_pre2014b' and 'getpos' into my working directory.

What am I doing wrong?

[Kelly Kearney]

Two options... either rename legendflex_pre2014b.m to legendflex.m (and don't download my more recent version of legendflex.m).

Or just add all 3 functions to your path, then call legendflex... it will fall back on the pre2014b version automatically if it determines that you're running an older version of Matlab. This latter method is the one I intended, since that way everything will still work properly if you ever upgrade Matlab to a version with the new handle graphics.

[Steven]

It works! Thanks a lot!

Answer 2

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

You can change the position

bar([1,2;3,4]) 
h=legend('one','two') 
pos=get(h,'position')
new_pos=pos
new_pos(3)=pos(3)+0.4  % This is the x length
new_pos(1)=pos(1)-0.4   %  The x position
set(h,'position',new_pos)

[Steven]

Thanks for reply!

But why do you want to change the position? Is it possible to change the size of the boxes in the legends, making the overall size of the legend smaller, but keeping all else equal?

Answer 3

[Robert Cumming]

You can change the fontSize property which makes it smaller.

Otherwise if your using pre 2014b you can get to all the properties through the legend handle. Since the legend is built on a axes you can alter the axes children