Get properties of histogram in MATLAB r2012a

Hey

I am trying to plot a histogram as follows:

x= [1 2 3 4 5];
nbins = 20;
histogram = hist(x,nbins)

However, what I obtain is histogram = count nbins (as if I used the count function) and not a figure; because of this, if I try to get the properties of the figure using get(histogram) I get an error.

I tried only hist(x,nbins), without naming the histogram as above, and that does give me a figure. But then, when I try to get the properties of the figure using get(hist(x,nbins) I get an error.

What I am trying to achieve is to create a histogram, get its properties and then play around with them using 'set'. For that I need to be able to first name the histogram, I assume.

Could anyone please help me?

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

x= [1 2 3 4 5];
nbins = 20;
hist(x,nbins)
set(gcf)
set(gca)

[Bianca Elena Ivanof]

Brilliant! Thanks!

Answer 2

[Guillaume]

Matlab replaced hist with histogram in newer versions of matlab partly because of this silly behaviour.

You have to use hist without any output argument for it to create a figure (or reuse an existing one). It uses the current axes in the current figure. So you could just query these afterward with gca and gcf respectively:

hist(x, nbins); %create histogram in current axes of current figure. If none exist, create them
hfig = gcf; %handle to current figure
hax = gca; %handle to current axes
set(hax, 'XTick', 1:5);

[Bianca Elena Ivanof]

Yep, thank you! It all makes sense now. I suspected that there was a minor snag with the 2012 version since on the MathWorks blog they use histogram and not hist...