LineSpec

to quickly customize the lines appearance in a plot

Description

The LineSpec is an optional argument that can be used inside a plot command to customize each new line aspect. It has to be given as a concatenated string containing information about color, line style or markers. It is very useful to quickly specify such basic line properties.

To specify a red longdash-dot with diamond marker, the string can be ‘r-.diam’. As you can see, a full complete spelling of each property value is not required but the string, which is a concatenation (in any order) of these three types of properties , must remain unambiguous. Furthermore, the string specification is not case sensitive.

Here is a complete list of the LineSpec types you can specify (using plot).

LineStyle:a string defining the line style. This property is linked to the object’s line_style property (see polyline_properties). Specifier Line Style - Solid line (default) – Dashed line : Dotted line -. Dash-dotted line

: :Color: a string defining the line color. This property is linked to

the object’s foreground property (see polyline_properties). Specifier Color r Red g Green b Blue c Cyan m Magenta y Yellow k Black w White

: : A default color table is used to color plotted curves if you do

not specify a color (neither with LineSpec nor with GlobalProperty). When drawing multiple lines, the plot command automatically cycles through this table. Here are the used colors:

: : R G B 0. 0. 1. 0. 0.5 0. 1. 0. 0. 0. 0.75 0.75 0.75 0. 0.75

0.75 0.75 0. 0.25 0.25 0.25

: :Marker type: A string defining the marker type. note that if you

specify a marker wihtout a line style, only the marker is drawn. This property is linked to the object’s mark_style and mark_mode properties (see polyline_properties). Specifier Marker Type + Plus sign o Circle * Asterisk . Point x Cross ‘square’ or ‘s’ Square ‘diamond’ or ‘d’ Diamond ^ Upward-pointing triangle v Downward-pointing triangle > Right-pointing triangle < Left- pointing triangle ‘pentagram’ Five-pointed star (pentagram) ‘none’ No marker (default)

:

Sample

Examples

x=1:0.1:10; // Init.
`plot`_(x,`sin`_(x),'r.->') // plots a dash-dotted line with a right-pointing triangle centered on each points.
`clf`_();

// If you specify a marker wihtout a line style, only the marker is drawn
`plot`_(x,`sin`_(x),'d') // plots a dash-dotted line with a right-pointing triangle centered on each points.

x=1:10; // Init.
// combinations' order does not matter
`plot`_(x,x.*x,'*cya--')

//multiple plots with different LineSpecs
`clf`_();
t=0:%pi/20:2*%pi;
`plot`_(t,`sin`_(t),'ro-.',t,`cos`_(t),'cya+',t,`abs`_(`sin`_(t)),'--mo')

See Also

• GlobalProperty to customize the objects appearance (curves, surfaces...) in a plot or surf command.
• plot 2D plot
• clf clear or reset the current graphic figure (window) to default values