How to plot z component as a colorbar with lines connecting scatter plot points?

I have a data set with x, y and z scalar components. I am trying to make an x vs y plot with z shown as a colorbar. My current code does this however, I need it to connect all the points with a line and that line should be a colorbar. I tried adding line(x,y) to the plotting code but this adds just a line without a color scale. How do I add a line to connect (x,y) points that is a colorbar of z?

scatter(x,y,20,z);

xlabel('x');

ylabel('y');

c = colorbar;

c.Label.String = 'z';

Answer 1

[Dave B]

I think what you're asking for is a color gradient on the line? Unfortunately lines don't have color gradients. A common workaround is to use something like patch or surface which do have color gradients. To make this work you have to do a trick where you make two copies of the data, flipping one:

x=rand(10,1);
y=rand(10,1);
c=rand(10,1);

scatter(x,y,20,c,'f')
patch([x;flip(x)],[y;flip(y)],[c;flip(c)],'FaceColor','none','EdgeColor','interp')
c=colorbar;
c.Label.String='z';