How to quickly update plotted texts in axes?

I am plotting a fairly big amount of patches (100+) together with their 'ids' as strings, in a loop to create an animation.

I am able to update the patches using the set command, since they are all contained in a 1x1 Patch object. I am not able to find something as straight forward for the texts, because they are in a 100x1 array of Text objects.

With a 100x1 array of Text-objects, can I somehow do an array-based update similar to how I can do for my patches (without having to re-plot or loop over each text object)?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Yes, it is possible, but not well known. I end up having to go back to the reference material every time I try to use it.

t(1) = text(0,0.5,'string1');
t(2) = text(.3,0.5,'string2');
set(t,{'string'},{'test1';'test2'})  %notice the column vector of new values

[Andreas Nord]

Great this works. But I need to also update the positions, I tried:

set(t,{'Xdata'}, [pos1;pos2; ..])
set(t,{'Xdata'}, {pos1;pos2; ..})

Which throws errors. Is it also possible to update the positions similarly?

[Walter Roberson]

Indirectly. text() has Position, which is a vector of [x y z]. To update the x separately you need to fetch the original data, update the x, and store back the data.

t(1) = text(0,0.5,'string1');
t(2) = text(.3,0.5,'string2');
set(t,{'string'},{'test1';'test2'})  %notice the column vector of new values
P = cell2mat(get(t, 'Position'));
P(:,1) = [0.2; 0.6];  %vector of new x data
P = num2cell(P,2);
set(t, {'Position'}, P)

The get(), transfer to/from cell, and set(), could be simplified to a simple set() if you are changing both x and y data at the same time; just remember to toss a z coordinate (0 if appropriate) in at the same time.

The num2cell() trick might come in handy for you if you have an array of coordinates.

[Andreas Nord]

works like a charm, thanks!