Set axes properties in a loop

Many times I want to set the axes properties with a loop. Here is an example of how I am currently doing it:

ax = gca;  
axs = 'XYZ';
for k = 1:3
    ax.([axs(k) 'Label']).String = sprintf('A_%d (g/cm^2)',k); % label axis units
end

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

[Thorsten]

In this case I think that the for loop is kind of overkill. Without a loop, it is much easier to understand what's going on:

ax.XLabel.String = 'A_1 (g/cm^2)';
ax.YLabel.String = 'A_2 (g/cm^2)';
ax.ZLabel.String = 'A_3 (g/cm^2)';

[Robert Alvarez]

That is a simplified excerpt to explain the problem. Here is the actual code:

Ap = @(x) interp1(1:50,nodelist(1,:),x,'linear','extrap');
axs = 'XYZ';
ax = gca;
ax.CameraPosition = [93.8319 -47.0997 260.6367];
for k = 1:3
    axlbl = [axs(k) 'TickLabel']; % read current axes
    lblidx = str2num(char(ax.(axlbl))); % convert to ints
    lblidx(lblidx<1) = 1; % change to 1 ... so can use as indexes into vector
    ax.(axlbl) = num2str(Ap(lblidx),'%0.2f'); % overwrite tick labels
    ax.([axs(k) 'Label']).String = sprintf('A_%d (g/cm^2)',k); % label axis units
end

[Thorsten]

I see. Please post the complete example such that we can run the code. For example, nodelist is missing, and a command like plot or surf to show the data.

[Robert Alvarez]

The exact code is not relevant. My point is that I want to do complicated stuff inside the loop and it is clumsy to have to repeat the code for each axis.

The use of separate function names such as xlabel, ylabel, zlabel or separate variable names like xticklabel, yticklabel, etc for analogous variables of the plot axes was a design decision by Mathworks that makes it hard to write code to do similar things to each axis.

I am hoping that there is some perhaps undocumented way to access these variables without having to got through the contortions in my example or simply repeating the code as you did in your example.