legend in 2d line plot

I'm plotting data in a for loop where I'm looping through two datasets so using plot...; hold on;plot...

I only want the legend for the first plot, but there doesn't seem to be a way of doing this. Any advice?

Failing this, is there a way of adding a graph onto a currently existing graph. So, that I could just plot the first with a legend and then plot the second on top of this without a legend?

The code I've written is shown below:

    for i = 1:length(LakeName);
        for ii = 1:length(CorrVariables)
            fh{ii} = figure(ii);
            plot(HiResDay,HiRes.(LakeName{i}).(CorrVariables{ii}),'linewidth',2,'color',cmap(i,:));hold on;        
            plot(LowResDay,LowRes.(LakeName{i}).(CorrVariables{ii}),'--k','linewidth',3);
            hTitle  = title ([CorrVariables{ii} ' 2011']);
            hXLabel = xlabel('Time (Day of year)'    );   
            hLegend = legend(LakeName{:});
    end
    end

This doesn't work as I expected; the legend shows the line for the first plot and then the second, then back to the first, so in the end I have the first legend entry in the designated color, then the second legend entry shown according to '--k'.

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

Here is a simple example of using the handles of only the first plots when making the legend.

h1 = zeros(5,1);
h2 = zeros(5,1);

lineColor = rand(10,3);

figure
hold on
for i =1:5;
    h1(i) = plot(rand(4,1),rand(4,1),'Color',lineColor(i,:)); % Plot some random data in a random color
    h2(i) = plot(rand(4,1),2+rand(4,1),'Color',lineColor(5+i,:));
end

legendText = {'1','2','3','4','5'};

legend(h1,legendText); % Make legend using handles to only first plots

[Richard]

this works great for one plot. But obviously if I add it to the end of my code, where I have 4 figures produced, it only adds the legend to the last figure. I want the same legend for all the other plots. how could I do this?

[the cyclist]

I was hoping you would see how this would generalize. The essence is that you need to create a vector of the handles to the ONLY the elements you want in the legend. Then use that vector of handles when you call the legend command.

That is what I did in my example. I built my vector of handles from only the first plot, and used that vector in the legend command.

[Richard]

finally got it, I needed to create a cell array for the handles of each figure. cheers.