LineSpec (MATLAB Function Reference)

Line specification syntax

Description

This page describes how to specify the properties of lines used for plotting. MATLAB enables you to define many characteristics including:

Line style
Line width
Color
Marker type
Marker size
Marker face and edge coloring (for filled markers)

MATLAB defines string specifiers for line styles, marker types, and colors. The following tables list these specifiers.

Line Style Specifiers

Specifier
Line Style

-
solid line (default)

--
dashed line

:
dotted line

-.
dash-dot line

Specifier	Line Style
`-`	solid line (default)
`--`	dashed line
`:`	dotted line
`-.`	dash-dot line

Marker Specifiers

Specifier
Marker Type

+
plus sign

o
circle

*
asterisk

.
point

x
cross

s
square

d
diamond

^
upward pointing triangle

v
downward pointing triangle

>
right pointing triangle

<
left pointing triangle

p
five-pointed star (pentagram)

h
six-pointed star (hexagram)

Specifier	Marker Type
`+`	plus sign
`o`	circle
`*`	asterisk
`.`	point
`x`	cross
`s`	square
`d`	diamond
`^`	upward pointing triangle
`v`	downward pointing triangle
`>`	right pointing triangle
`<`	left pointing triangle
`p`	five-pointed star (pentagram)
`h`	six-pointed star (hexagram)

Color Specifiers

Specifier
Color

r
red

g
green

b
blue

c
cyan

m
magenta

y
yellow

k
black

w
white

Specifier	Color
`r`	red
`g`	green
`b`	blue
`c`	cyan
`m`	magenta
`y`	yellow
`k`	black
`w`	white

Many plotting commands accept a LineSpec argument that defines three components used to specify lines:

Line style
Marker symbol
Color

For example,

plot(x,y,'-.or')

plots y versus x using a dash-dot line (-.), places circular markers (o) at the data points, and colors both line and marker red (r). Specify the components (in any order) as a quoted string after the data arguments.

If you specify a marker, but not a line style, MATLAB plots only the markers. For example,

plot(x,y,'d')

Related Properties

When using the plot and plot3 functions, you can also specify other characteristics of lines using graphics properties:

LineWidth - specifies the width (in points) of the line
MarkerEdgeColor - specifies the color of the marker or the edge color forfilled markers (circle, square, diamond, pentagram, hexagram, and the four triangles).
MarkerFaceColor - specifies the color of the face of filled markers.
MarkerSize - specifies the size of the marker in points.

In addition, you can specify the LineStyle, Color, and Marker properties instead of using the symbol string. This is useful if you want to specify a color that is not in the list by using RGB values. See ColorSpec for more information on color.

Examples

Plot the sine function over three different ranges using different line styles, colors, and markers.

t = 0:pi/20:2*pi;
plot(t,sin(t),'-.r*')
hold on
plot(sin(t-pi/2),'--mo')
plot(sin(t-pi),':bs')
hold off

Create a plot illustrating how to set line properties.

plot(t,sin(2*t),'-mo',...
                'LineWidth',2,...
                'MarkerEdgeColor','k',...
                'MarkerFaceColor',[.49 1 .63],...
                'MarkerSize',12)