Format axes Tick Labels in log scale

Dear all, an annoying issue when plotting on log scales, is apparently not being able to control the format of axis tick labels.

For example: given XTick = [0.1,1,10,30];

I want to manually set my own labels, e.g. XTickLabels = num2str(10^-1, 10^0, 10^1, 10^-1].

How can I format XTickLabels so that I display tick labels as powers of ten (i.e. base^{exponent} in latex interpreter)?

Right now MATLAB either omits the last label if XTickLabelModel is 'auto' or can display strings of the type '10^X' or can show only numbers as decimals (i.e. '0.1, 1, 10, 0.1').

Is there a way to control directly the format of axis tick labels, or I have to work it around using a text(-) object and switching XTickLabels off?

Thank you in advance for your help. Maurizio

[Amir ghorab]

hey, I don't know why I can not make this work :((((((((((((((((((((

Can anyone please post a complete example????

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

XTickLabels = cellstr(num2str(round(log10(XTick(:))), '10^%d'));

[Shih-Kai]

The solution is awesome. It solves the xticklabels formatted in LaTex interpreter. Thank you so much.

Answer 2

[Kristian Beedholm]

But there isn't a latex interpreter for the xticklabels. You have to do it with text, I guess. Solving the same, I came up with this:

y=ylim;
yp=y(1)-abs(diff(ylim))*0.05;
x=get(gca,'xtick');
set(gca,'xticklabel',[],'xtickmode','manual');
for j=1:length(x)
  h=text(x(j),yp,['10^{' num2str(log10(x(j))) '}']);
  set(h,'HorizontalAlignment','center','fontsize',get(gca,'fontsize'))
end

Answer 3

[Cecilia Fleeger]

I come across this post and find a solution. To get read of '^' in 10^3, for example is all about TickLabelInterpreter property.

xtick=10.^(-6:-2);

xticklab = cellstr(num2str(round(-log10(xtick(:))), '10^-^%d'));

set(gca,'XTick',xtick,'XTickLabel',xticklab,'TickLabelInterpreter','tex')

Answer 4

[Mark Cohen]

Here is a simple solution to formatting labels on MATLAB log plots

yt = get(gca,'ytick');
for j=1:length(yt)
    % With log plots, MATLAB defaulted to exponential format, that is difficult for lay
    % readerst to understand. In my case, I wanted integer format.
    YTL{1,j} = num2str(yt(j),'%d');
end
yticklabels(YTL);

Answer 5

[Fabian]

The easiest what I found is:

set(gca,'Xscale','log')

hope it helps