Best way to handle work log listbox output in GUI?

Hello, thanks for reading this,

What I want to do is set up a listbox that outputs a work log of what I do in the GUI. What I do is output strings to the listbox whenever I do a certain task. My problem is whenever I output a string, it overrides what was already there.

What I do is set the handle for the listbox to a string value whenever I output a new string using set(handles.listbox, ...), and I know this is the problem because I'm continually setting the listbox to a new value. My issue is I don't know how to dynamically add to it without deleting what was already there, it seems wasteful to continually delete and populate it.

What I was thinking of doing is adding to a continually existing string, or concatenate several strings into a longer one using cells. I would still be continuously deleting and populating it, but I wouldn't know how else to do it. Is this the best way, or is there something better to do I'm not understanding?

Answer 1

[per isakson]

"it overrides what was already there" that's the way Matlab works. You need to

• get what's in the listbox
• add the new entry to the list
• set the entire list

Example:

    figure
    lbh = uicontrol( 'Style', 'Listbox', 'String', {'line1','line2'} );
    str = get( lbh, 'String' );
    str = cat( 1, {'new line'}, str );
    set( lbh, 'String', str )
    str{end+1} = 'bottom line'; 
    set( lbh, 'String', str )

[Brian]

This is a bit embarrassing to say, but this seems like it would work exactly as I need it to.

Such a simple solution to what I imagined would be a hassle.

One last question: I'm having problems with adding newlines to the string. Whats the best way to handle this?

Thanks again for your help.

[per isakson]

I find it most convenient to use a cell array of strings as in the example I added to my answer.

[Brian]

Thanks, I got it to work!