when Plotting multiple lines using plot, how do adjust line color with jet?

You can pass a 2d Vector to plot and create multiple lines. I want to specify the color in vector format as well but cant figure out how to do it without a for loop. As an example I set up x and y as 2d matricies which describe concentric circles of radius 1 through 5. You can pass x and y directly to plot and it will create the desired plot with the default colors. I just want to adjust the colors using the jet function, but it seems it can only be done with a for loop. Is this possible?

R = 1:5;                %Radius [1x5]
th = [0:360].';         %Theta  [361x1]
x = cosd(th)*R;         % [361x5]
y = sind(th)*R;         % [361x5]
cmap = jet(length(R));  % [5x3]


figure
plot(x,y)
% plot(x,y,'Color',cmap.')  %? This doesnt work!!

figure
hold on
for kk  = 1:length(R)
    plot(x(:,kk),y(:,kk),'Color',cmap(kk,:).')
end

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

In a release after yours, R2019b, it became possible to use the new colororder() function in order to change the color of lines, including existing lines.

In your release (R2017b -- and thank you for including that information!), what you should do is set the axes ColorOrder property before drawing the lines:

R = 1:5;                %Radius [1x5]
th = [0:360].';         %Theta  [361x1]
x = cosd(th)*R;         % [361x5]
y = sind(th)*R;         % [361x5]
cmap = jet(length(R));  % [5x3]


fig = figure();
ax = axes(fig);
ax.ColorOrder = cmap;
hold(ax, 'on')
plot(ax, x,y)
hold(ax, 'off')

Be sure to have "hold" turned on for the axes, as ColorOrder is one of the properties that is replaced when MATLAB does its default plot initialization.

[Peter Brehm]

Thanks for the suggestion!