So I needed to change the style/color/symbol of the legend entries. I found out that (in normal conditions) for each legend entry there are 3 children handles, the first is the marker, second is the line, and third is the text. So I get these 3 handles this way:
Hchilds = get(hleg,'Children'); % Where hleg is the legend handle.
So when everything is working normal I can access the legend graphic objects and edit as desired in order to control the legend as I please.
I do this inside a group of plotting functions that I call and so on, but, SOMETIMES (don't know exactly what triggers this behavior), while I am calling this SAME set of functions repeatedly (trying out different plot settings for instance), suddenly there are not 3 children handles for each entry in the legend, but 8. My very vague guess is that, somewhere along the many functions I call, something triggers an option or something that changes the legend (or axes) behavior.
Inside the axes properties I have (for a plot with just 1 line) 8 children instead of the normal 1 I should have. I can't trace the problem easily since I think it can happen calling the same set of functions X number of times. A number of calls will go alright and then suddenly this changes and my function that changes legend looks crashes because its treating a text handle as a line handle (since the order in the handles is not right anymore).
A solution I found was to get the legend children handles through:
Hchilds = legprop.UserData.LabelHandles; % (here I do have 3 handles per legend entry even when the thing is behaving strangely)
Where legprop = get(hleg); % Where hleg is the legend handle.
But I thought the first approach was more appropiate or direct, and, although the solution I found seems to work, I would like (out of curiosity and not to lose faith) what is going on.
I know I should post code but the thing is the whole code is a lot more complicated than the actual problem, and what is curious is that the problem triggers while I am still calling the same routine over and over. Once this weird behavior is triggered, the complete Matlab session will behave this way (until I restart the whole program) even if I do "clear all", "close all", clc, everything. Once triggered, I get 8 children when running this:
plot(1:10); hleg = legend('L1'); hch = get(hleg,'Children');
And then, length(hch) is 8 instead of 3.
What I hope is that maybe someone that knows a lot about these things maybe says "hey, these are hidden handles that appear when you put option X in manual" or something like it.
Thanks in advance and sorry if the post is confusing.
JP
