Legend symbol in errorbar figure

I just downloaded the 2017a Matlab version. When I use the errorbar plot now in the legend it appears not only the symbol but the errorbar lines as well, which I don't like. I tried to look into the documentation, but there's no reference to how to disable the errorbar lines to show up in the legend. Do you know any workaround?

Thanks.

Answer 1

[Randy Acheson]

Starting in 2014b, the implementation of the 'legend' function was changed, and this is what is causing the new behavior. There is currently no supported way to remove the errorbars in the legend, and I have submitted an enhancement request to the developers of this function.

There is a workaround that will enable you to remove the errorbar lines. However, this is not recommended since this workaround will reduce the capabilities of your legend.

In order to roll back the change and get the legacy version of the 'legend' function, you can supply the 'legend' function with multiple outputs, and the errorbar lines will not appear. Here is an example:

x = 1:10:100;
y = [20 30 45 40 60 65 80 75 95 90];
err = 8*ones(size(y));
errorbar(x,y,err)
[lgd, icons, plots, txt] = legend('show');

You can refer to the documentation for the 'legend' function outputs here:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/legend.html#bt6ef_q-4

Answer 2

[Dominic]

I just stumbled across the same issue. A possible workaround is to plot dummy data outside the visible range with the same markers first. Then plot your data and apply the legend then only for the first elements.

For example:

 % define markers
 markers = {'x','o','^'};

 % initialize figure for legend
 for i = 1:3
    plot(0,0,'Marker', markers{i},'LineStyle','none','Color','k'); hold on;
 end

 % plot the actual values with error bars
 for i = 1:3
    errorbar(xvals, yvaly, err, 'Marker', markers{i}, 'color', 'k');
 end

 % set visible range such that the dummy data is not visible
 xlim([0, 10])
 ylim([0.5, 1.5])

 % add the legend to your liking
 legend({'Version 1', 'Version 2', 'Version 3'}, 'location', 'northwest');

Answer 3

[JKM1000]

I agree that this is really ugly. I have been deleting the errorbar lines using a vector graphics editor, like inkscape. This is not ideal.