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hline and vline

version 1.0.0.0 (3.27 KB) by Brandon Kuczenski

Brandon Kuczenski (view profile)
Draws 'low-impact' horizontal or vertical lines on the current axes
4.9
119 Ratings

127 Downloads

Updated 09 Nov 2001

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Editor's Note: This file was a File Exchange Pick of the Week

These functions draw horizontal or vertical lines at specified places on the current axes. The axes are automatically held for the drawing of the lines, and restored to their previous 'hold' states afterwards. THe HandleVisibility of the new lines is "off" so that they don't appear on legends. (Incidentally, this also makes them invisible to moveplot.m and addplot.m) Objects with HandleVisibility set to off can be "found" by setting the root object's "ShowHiddenHandles" property to "on". Also, if an output argument is specified, the function will return the handle to the otherwise 'hidden' object.

Further arguments allow the user to set the linetype and color of the line (default is 'r:'), and to add labels. For example:

h = vline(42,'g','The Answer')

will return a handle to a vertical line at x=42 on the current axes, colored green, and with a text label "The Answer" on the axes close to the line, and in the same color of the line.

hline and vline both accept vector inputs.

Cite As

Brandon Kuczenski (2020). hline and vline (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/1039-hline-and-vline), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .

Comments and Ratings (129)

Jorge Erazo Aux

Jorge Erazo Aux (view profile)

laurent jalabert

laurent jalabert (view profile)

is it possible to add a "delta" as input in order to shift the position of the text on the y axis ?
I am trying to use it on subplot of loglog plot using tight_subplot function, but the actual vline text position is shifted in x for unknown reason (probably due to tight_subplot). I add 2 vlines at different x position, but the text of those 2 vlines are surimposed. So I think that adding a delta as input such as hhh=vline(x,in1,in2,delta), can help to shift or not (delta=0) the position of the annotation.
I am using Matlab 2016b (and I know that from 2018, there is a function in Matlab for this but I don't have recent version)

% Example of code modification of vline :
if xunit<0.5
text(x+1e-2*xrange,delta + y(1)+ 0.1*(y(2)-y(1)),label,'color',get(h,'color'))
else
text(x-5e-2*xrange,delta + y(1)+0.1*(y(2)-y(1)),label,'color',get(h,'color'))
end

Parisa Zadeh

Parisa Zadeh (view profile)

Vasanth C

Vasanth C (view profile)

Far Bod

Far Bod (view profile)

very useful! thanks

jgomz

jgomz (view profile)

Excellent. Thank you!

Naufal Praditya

Naufal Praditya (view profile)

Everett Snieder

Everett Snieder (view profile)

Doesn't plot full length of graph, no clue why. Simpler to just use plot(xlim,[0,0],HandleVisibility,'off')

Aron Aertssen

Aron Aertssen (view profile)

Super awesome!

Eva

Eva (view profile)

Xiaotian Zhang

Xiaotian Zhang (view profile)

Darya Dubava

Darya Dubava (view profile)

Thank you so much! It was very helpful.

Sebastian Rask

Sebastian Rask (view profile)

tanveer haq

tanveer haq (view profile)

Raquel Felix

Raquel Felix (view profile)

Erin Winkler

Erin Winkler (view profile)

Han-seok Ryu

Han-seok Ryu (view profile)

Shabnam Nikbakhsh

Shabnam Nikbakhsh (view profile)

morteza kamalian kopae

morteza kamalian kopae (view profile)

James Niemeyer

James Niemeyer (view profile)

To the people who wish it could do different line widths: an easy solution is to go to line 84 and add 'linewidth',2) arguments to the plot command. A non-hardcoded solution would be to add a variable to the function, "LW" and then adjust the cases (because nargin changes) and put that variable in the 84th line where the plot is called

Prithvi Pani

Prithvi Pani (view profile)

Great simplification. Thanks!!

Ramez hamid

Ramez hamid (view profile)

Thanks

Vishal Raveendranathan

Vishal Raveendranathan (view profile)

Shay Moshe

Shay Moshe (view profile)

M. Saad

M. Saad (view profile)

Thanks alot

Quentin Dragomir

Quentin Dragomir (view profile)

Oleg Boiko

Oleg Boiko (view profile)

Samuel Triebels

Samuel Triebels (view profile)

Work well thanks

Louis-Etienne

Louis-Etienne (view profile)

Sen ZHAO

Sen ZHAO (view profile)

Joaquin Saldain

Joaquin Saldain (view profile)

Cannot use latex interpreter in label

Bucks Lin

Bucks Lin (view profile)

very helpful!! Wish having a new version of line RGB-color enable. thanks!

contnoel

contnoel (view profile)

Josh Beers

Josh Beers (view profile)

Robbe Louage

Robbe Louage (view profile)

Yuanqi Wang

Yuanqi Wang (view profile)

Nice and efficient!

Michael Steinbuechler

Michael Steinbuechler (view profile)

Naja Nielsen

Naja Nielsen (view profile)

Daniel Borrero

Daniel Borrero (view profile)

Morten Salvesen

Morten Salvesen (view profile)

Madina Makhmutova

Madina Makhmutova (view profile)

Hoang-Hiep Le

Hoang-Hiep Le (view profile)

CrossEntropy

CrossEntropy (view profile)

Mehmet E. Yavuz

Mehmet E. Yavuz (view profile)

Ivan Litvinov

Ivan Litvinov (view profile)

Taotao Zhou

Taotao Zhou (view profile)

Juliana Berthold

Juliana Berthold (view profile)

jk_cau

jk_cau (view profile)

Nicolas Dubois

Nicolas Dubois (view profile)

Asif Shahriar Nafi

Asif Shahriar Nafi (view profile)

Thanks a lot

Till Schnabel

Till Schnabel (view profile)

Is it possible to change the size of the text?

Till Schnabel

Till Schnabel (view profile)

Kunal Tiwari

Kunal Tiwari (view profile)

Adaeze Adigwe

Adaeze Adigwe (view profile)

Matthias Wassenberg

Matthias Wassenberg (view profile)

Thanks, you make my day!!

Katharina Moritz

Katharina Moritz (view profile)

Emanuele Galiffi

Emanuele Galiffi (view profile)

julen otegi

julen otegi (view profile)

Paul Kane

Paul Kane (view profile)

Jin Tan

Jin Tan (view profile)

Misaki Soma

Misaki Soma (view profile)

Nathan Kennedy

Nathan Kennedy (view profile)

I required a lot of lines on my graph, the labels overlap each other. Any fix to this?

Andrei Bosco

Andrei Bosco (view profile)

Honigmelone

Honigmelone (view profile)

Why is this not part of stock Matlab?

Michael Stritt

Michael Stritt (view profile)

Thanks, I use it all the time for my work, adjusted it a little to change the thickness etc. but it's really nice

Clemens Schlegel

Clemens Schlegel (view profile)

Works fine but doens't work with scatterplot, only a point is drawn at the bottom when using with scatterplot.

Lakis Katabos

Lakis Katabos (view profile)

Frederico Marc

Frederico Marc (view profile)

Thanks! The function is very helpful. With subplot it is not working 100% yet.

Brij Bhushan

Brij Bhushan (view profile)

Oli

Oli (view profile)

It would be nice to be able to draw black lines. Could not figure out how.
Otherwise amazing tool!

Geert Kapteijns

Geert Kapteijns (view profile)

I had a problem with subscripts of labels partially disappearing into the line. Here's how I fixed it:

https://gist.github.com/Kappie/20a296e1d78b0db6364c59af22d595f3

Kevin

Kevin (view profile)

Aria Ardalan

Aria Ardalan (view profile)

Mingwei Sun

Mingwei Sun (view profile)

Veronika K

Veronika K (view profile)

Great, thank you!

PPM

PPM (view profile)

Alexander Ruesch

Alexander Ruesch (view profile)

Leandro Sousa

Leandro Sousa (view profile)

Very easy.
Thanks for doing this!

YU GU

YU GU (view profile)

easy to use! powerful

mima zebouchi

mima zebouchi (view profile)

plz i have a probleme in sliceomatic fonction
and also Undefined function or method 'BrainPartition' for input arguments of type 'char'.

Daniel

Daniel (view profile)

I actually cant live without this function. It is so easy to use much easier than the alternatives.

Thanks for doing this!

iza

iza (view profile)

any idea how to change to other segmentation algorithm ?..

Andy

Andy (view profile)

Very nice.

Only issue is that the line is only applied within the visible axes. For example I am applying the line within a GUI, if you zoom out of the plot then you need to reapply.

Alexander

Alexander (view profile)

Adrianne

Adrianne (view profile)

Simple and they work great.

Yuri K

Yuri K (view profile)

It would be nice to be able to use parameter name-value pairs as for line objects. For example, I often need 'LineWidth'. Can do it as a separate set statement, but one-liner would be better.

Nicolas Beuchat

Nicolas Beuchat (view profile)

Use it all the time!

bill

bill (view profile)

nice

Dmitriy

Dmitriy (view profile)

Abdullah

Abdullah (view profile)

Exactly what I wanted !

Tongchao

Tongchao (view profile)

Great functions! Just what I need
It will be better if the location of text label can be arbitrarily specified.

TAFKARS

TAFKARS (view profile)

I meant to say...very helpful tool. Slight adjustment to code wrt linewidth etc to suit my personal taste/need, otherwise good job.

Qiang

Qiang (view profile)

Jimmy

Jimmy (view profile)

Matteo

Matteo (view profile)

Akshay B

Akshay B (view profile)

Very helpful and simple. Thanks!
I just made a minor change to the 'vline' function (to make the labels vertical):
Changed:
text(x+0.01*xrange,y(1)+0.1*(y(2)-y(1)),label,'color',get(h,'color'))
to:
text(x+0.02*xrange,y(1)+0.1*(y(2)-y(1)),label,...
'color',get(h,'color'),'Rotation',90)
and changed:
text(x-.05*xrange,y(1)+0.1*(y(2)-y(1)),label,'color',get(h,'color'))
to:
text(x-.01*xrange,y(1)+0.1*(y(2)-y(1)),label,...
'color',get(h,'color'),'Rotation',90)

Marit

Marit (view profile)

John

John (view profile)

I could not find these two in the Matlab stand function list. They are handy and should be standard functions. Any one know the reason why NOT? Excellent job, Brandon!

Pete

Pete (view profile)

Quick, simple and effective. Excellent.

Alejandro Arrizabalaga

Alejandro Arrizabalaga (view profile)

Kevin

Kevin (view profile)

handy little tool

Matteo

Matteo (view profile)

N/A

N/A (view profile)

Good job!!! Very good

N/A

N/A (view profile)

Storm Zhang

Storm Zhang (view profile)

This really saves me a lot of time. Matlab should put these two small programs into the standard library.

K R

Thanks - this saves a lot of time and trouble!

B K

Great tool, thanks for submitting!

Ben Kang

Very nice.

nimat r

Thanks a lot.It's very nice.

Greg L

Works great for linear axes. The location of the label is off if it has logrithmic axes.

Josiah Haswell

Awesome! At least sizeof(long) times better than doing it the standard way.

John D'Errico

Very nice. My only (minor) comment would be it might be nice to control the location of the annotation text. I do agree that this is functionality that should have always been in matlab.

By the way, if anyone is worried, it works on a mac also. This is not system specific code.

Simon B

Great tool - one enhancement would be to allow for restricting the range of the lines.

Felix Totir

Should be Matlab standard functions.

carlo murgia

Chris H

perfect for what i needed.

Andy N.

Very Handy

Dimitri Shvorob

When I use VLINE, and later resize the axis with AXIS, vertical line's limits remain unadjusted.

Krishna Pillai

Nice handy function. Good job

Min Poh

test

James Tedd

very handy

Kedar Patel

Thanks!

Handy lil' time saver.

Mike Jennings

This is an excellent, easy to use tool to add a reference line in your plot figure. Can also be customized for color and linetypes. Good Job.

Stephen Sester

This function meets the common need for drawing simple horz and vert lines on plots. Very nice addition to my tools; should be incorporated into future plot revision. Thank you for taking the time to share your work.

Nahur Fonseca

thanks for writing this.
It's amazing how matlab runtime library did not have such a function built-in.

Wolfgang Stiegmaier

Excellent, easy to use, very effective, good work!

confidential confidential

fast and easy!

H Z

it's very handy and useful!!! Thanks:)

Larry Friese

Very nice, but I get two extra data elements in the plot legend? Is there a way around that?

MATLAB Release Compatibility
Created with R12
Compatible with any release
Platform Compatibility
Windows macOS Linux
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