How can I give a figure both a name and a number?

In my program I have a lot of windows and when working on it then I redraw the plots. Also I switch a lot between scripts which generate plots. What I would like to have is that say a specific script always uses a figure associated with a specifc number. In addition to that I want to figure to have title similarly as when we use figure('Name','Name of the figure'). How can I do that?

My MATLAB version is R2019b.

Answer 1

[Sriram Tadavarty]

Hi Felix,

You can do that by using Name-Value pairs options of figure. You can even look at the examples provided in that page, the first example is what you are looking for.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sriram

[Sriram Tadavarty]

Once you have a Name tag, you cannot change the number. So, updating both is not possible, but u can work of with the Name tag to have the update to same figure, how many times you run the script.

[Felix Crazzolara]

Hi Sriram,

Thank you for your quick response! I think I don't understand what you mean. If I do for example

figure('Name','Hello')

then I get figure with different numbers. For example Figure 1: Hello and Figure 2: Hello. Still, I obtain Figure 1: Hello if I do figure(1) after both of the previous command. That being said, how can I figure out the figure that was assigned to the new figure if I do something like

figure('Name','Hello')?

[Felix Crazzolara]

Ah I got it. The returned figure object has field called Number.

[Walter Roberson]

fig_handle = figure('Name','Hello')
fig_num = fig_handle.Number

However, in some cases figures are generated that do not have an integer figure number, and when that happens, the Number property is usually empty. You can find the actual figure number in such cases by using

fig_num = double(fig_handle)

These days it is advised that you do not use figure numbers: just record the handles returned by figure() and pass those around.

Answer 2

[也 王]

fig_handle  = figure( 20 ); 
fig_handle.Name = 'Fig name';