Background
I have a variable number of datasets, N, which are generated in a loop. I would like to plot these datasets as a color gradient where each dataset is a different shade a given color, say from light blue to dark blue. Ideally, I would like the first and last colors to stay fixed, but would like the number of divisions between those colors (ie: light blue and dark blue) to vary as N varies. My solution runs into problems because parentheses are used to define a function defining a matrix of color triplets as well as the row index in the matrix.
Partial Solution
I use the 'uisetcolor' command to manually choose my desired shades for light blue and dark blue (this process not shown here, try it yourself): lightBLUE = [0.356862745098039,0.811764705882353,0.956862745098039];
darkBLUE = [0.0196078431372549,0.0745098039215686,0.670588235294118];
With these chosen endpoints I create a blue color gradient with a fixed number of shades, 'kk' (this is based on the solution to a previous question by Matlab staff). blueGRADIENTfixed = [linspace(lightBLUE(1),darkBLUE(1),kk)', linspace(lightBLUE(2),darkBLUE(2),kk)', linspace(lightBLUE(3),darkBLUE(3),kk)'];
Create some fake data and plot it using 'blueGRADIENTfixed':
plot(x,yi{i},'color',blueGRADIENTfixed(i,:))
That should give you a good idea of the intended result.
The problem
This works ok, but is not ideal because the number of gradations is fixed and I don't know it ahead of time. Suppose that I only had N=2 curves generated in the loop, if the number of gradients is hard coded at k=10, both curves will be plotted using very nearly the same shade of light blue (hard to distinguish). To fix this I tried defining a function that creates the necessary matrix for a variable number of gradations, 'Nvar':
blueGRADIENTflexible = @(Nvar) [linspace(lightBLUE(1),darkBLUE(1),Nvar)', linspace(lightBLUE(2),darkBLUE(2),Nvar)', linspace(lightBLUE(3),darkBLUE(3),Nvar)'];
test=blueGRADIENTflexible(N)
Try using it in plot loop:
plot(x,yi{i},'color',blueGRADIENTflexible(N)(i,:))
This throws the following error: 'Indexing with parentheses '()' must appear as the last operation of a valid indexing expression.' (Note: if I evaluate the code using "Run" button on this page the error is "invalid array indexing"). This seems to be coming from the double use of parentheses for the function and row index. i.e. function(N) (i,:)
A dumb solution would be to just create a variable for the appropriately sized matrix for each plot to avoid the use of double parentheses. This would be something like:
dumbdumb = blueGRADIENTflexible(N);
plot(x,yi{i},'color',dumbdumb(i,:))
This works, but I'd rather not do that because it still requires manually generating a new variable for each plot. I tried a few methods of converting the matrix to a cell array thinking that would fix the double parentheses problem but got a similar error.
Does anyone know of a way to get code simlar to that for 'fig2' to work?
Thanks!
