How do I add a hat on a character which is displayed in the LEGEND of a figure in MATLAB 7.0 (R14)?

I would like to add a hat on a character in a string which is displayed in the legend of a figure in MATLAB 7.1 (R14SP3).

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

As of MATLAB 7.0 (R14), "LaTeX" has been added as an optional interpreter for text objects in a figure.

In order to put a hat on a character that is to be displayed within a figure, the "Interpreter" property of the text should to be set to "LaTeX" and the equivalent LaTeX command "\hat{x}" should be typed as "$$\hat{x}$$".

The legend of a figure is an axes object. The text object in the legend is a child of the parent axes object. The following code demonstrates how a 'hat' can be added with the LEGEND function:

% Plot a line

plot(1:10);

% Create a blank legend

h = legend('');

% hchild is the handle to the children of the axes object.

% In this case it is a 3 by 1 vector and hchild(3) is the

% handle to the string in the legend

hchild = get(h,'children');

% Set LaTeX as the interpreter

set(hchild(3),'Interpreter','LaTeX');

% Add x with a hat to the legend in the current figure

set(hchild(3),'String','$$\hat{x}$$');

[dpb]

While old, just stumbled across... "$\hat{x}$ is not working"

Use

$$\hat{x}$$

NB: the double $$

Also, legend is no longer an axis but a legend object that wraps the axes inside that no longer have total access to the underlying axis itself...