MATLAB for loop through columns to plot multiple lines

Question

I need your help again :). I'm trying to plot multiple lines for a very large dataset. To start easier, I divided the dataset to get a TABLE in Matlab that contains 6 columns, with the first column representing the date that I want on my x-axis. Now I want to plot the other columns (and in the original file are a lot more than 6 columns) on the y axis, using a for loop. I tried the following, with no success:

hold on
for i=2:1:6
  plot(Doldenstock(:,1), Doldenstock(:,i));
end
hold off

As I understand this, this code would do exactly what I want for columns 2,3,4,5,6. However, I always get the same error code:

Error using tabular/plot Too many input arguments.

Error in Plotting_bogeo (line 6) plot(Doldenstock(:,1), Doldenstock(:,i));

Now, I don't know if maybe for loops like this don't work for tabes but only for arrays?

Thanks for your help in advance!

Cheers, Tamara

obchardon · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-16 22:09:57Z

2

The function plot(x) expect x to be a scalar, a vector, or a matrix. But in your case the input is a table, because accessing a table with parentheses return a table, which is not supported.

If you read the doc "how to access data in a table" you will figure out that you need to use curly brace {} to extract the raw data (in your case a 1D matrix).

So use:

plot(T{:,1},T{:,2})

edited Oct 16, 2018 at 22:09

answered Oct 16, 2018 at 22:01

obchardon

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4 Comments

Andras Deak -- Слава Україні Over a year ago

The error says Error using tabular/plot Too many input arguments. so it seems that plot is defined (overloaded) for the table class, but it only supports a single input argument. Unfortunately I couldn't find any documentation for the method online. Also, if you can extract the matrices in the array you can skip the for loop altogether by plotting the first column versus the rest of the columns in one call to plot.

obchardon Over a year ago

From the plot error warning There is no plot method for the 'table' class. Plot the variables in a table using dot or brace subscripting.. But yes indeed plot(T{:,1},T{:,2:6}) will work, no for loop needed here.

Andras Deak -- Слава Україні Over a year ago

Ah, interesting. For two or more input arguments we get the canned "too many input arguments" error, but for a single table argument we get the error you quoted. Only mildly confusing :)

Tamara Mathys Over a year ago

Thank you so much!!! It worked :). Can't believe how much time I spent trying to figure this out..

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