When plotting figures random in a figure, how can you make sure they dont overlap?

I am making a visual search task in Matlab.

For this Im plotting random figures (X or O) with the colour blue or red in a figure. Im using 'rand' to asign a location between 0 and 1. How can I make sure that the plotted symbols do not overlap?

This is my function to plot multiple symbols random in a plot;

function put_symbol_infigure(s, k, m)

% This function puts a letter (symbol) s at a random location loc in figure

% The figure goes from 0 to 1 with the colour k

% m = how many times the symbol is plotted in the figure

% loc1 is the x-coordinate, loc2 is the y-coordinate

% s = string, example given: 'X' or 'O'

% k = string that gives the colour, example given: 'g' or 'r'

for i = 1:m

% random location between 0 and 1 is given to the y and x coordinate

loc(1) = rand;

loc(2) = rand;

% Location and symbol are given to variable g

g=text(loc(1), loc(2), s);

% Figure is made with all the given requirements

set(g, 'color', k);

end

end

Answer 1

[Sindhu Karri]

Hii,

“RandStream” function can be used to set different seeds to generate different numbers and avoid overlap between symbols.

Refer the link below, for detailed information:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/randstream.html