How do I get the prior figure handle?

I have a gui that does data analysis on figures. I want it to act on the figure selected before the gui figure. How do I get the previous figure handle?

Answer 1

[Kaitlyn Keil]

It looks as though you can call

figHandles = findobj('Type', 'figure');

to get an array of all currently open figures, with the most recently accessed towards the front. If the gui figure is currently selected and the one you want was just before that, you should be able to get it back with

figHandles(2)

Hope that helps!

[Walter Roberson]

This does appear to work if you used figure() to make a figure active -- or code did it for you implicitly, including if you used axes() on a stored axes to make that axes the current axes.

However, this technique does not record which figure recently had "activity" on it that did not involve making the graphic object current. For example,

fig1 = figure('name', 'f1');
ax1 = axes('parent', fig1);
fig2 = figure('name', 'f2');

%at this point fig2 is the active figure

plot(ax1, rand(1,20));   %graphics activity without making ax1 current

%at this point, fig2 is still the active figure

Answer 2

[Guillaume]

The simplest way to get the prior figure handle is to save that figure handle when you create that prior figure.

hfig = figure;   %create figure and save handle.

Answer 3

[Rodrigo Bernal]

To close the previous figure, for example:

figHandles=findobj('Type','figure');
close(figHandles(end-1));

[Walter Roberson]

The most recent figure is towards the top of the list. The second-most-recent would be figHandles(2)

For example,

figure(1); figure(2); figure(3); figure(4);
figHandles = findobj('Type','figure')

figHandles = 
  4×1 Figure array:

  Figure    (4)
  Figure    (3)
  Figure    (2)
  Figure    (1)

close(figHandles(end-1))
figHandles

figHandles = 
  4×1 Figure array:

  Figure    (4)
  Figure    (3)
  Figure
  Figure    (1)

figure 2 now the one that is gone, but it is not the one before the most recent.