changing the X tick label

hi everybody, I am looking for a way to change the X tick labels not by hand , because it's a lot of ticks to change' i want to do it by loop , I have to vectors a=[ 1 2 3 4 5] b = [ 10 9 8 7 6] and my X tick label now is 1 2 3 4 5, but i want it to be : 1-10 2-9 3-8 4-7 5-6, I guess it involves somehow num2str function but I am not sure how or if..

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

set(gca, 'XTickLabel', a-b)

Or if you prefer,

set(gca, 'XTickLabel', str2num(a(:)-b(:)) )

It is important for this purpose that the expression passed to str2num be a column vector rather than a row vector.

Answer 2

[Matt Tearle]

If a and b are numeric, then

lbls = strcat(strtrim(cellstr(num2str(a(:)))),'-',strtrim(cellstr(num2str(b(:)))))
set(gca,'XTickLabel',lbls)

Ugly, but it gets rid of any excess spaces.

Answer 3

[Kelly Kearney]

Perhaps a little less ugly that Matt's suggestion (though not by much):

lbl = arrayfun(@(x,y) sprintf('%d-%d',x,y), a, b, 'uni', 0);
set(gca, 'xticklabel', lbl);

[Matt Tearle]

Ooh arrayfun. Cute. This was my sprintf solution:

lbls = regexp(sprintf('%d-%d;',[a(:),b(:)]'),';','split');

set(gca,'XTIckLabel',lbls(1:end-1))