Matlab figure and truncating data

Question

xlim command changes the axis limit of the figure. How can i also limit data that is contained by the figure? Apparently, even though xlim is applied data is still there.

Example: let's say i have a data set of 5000 elements. but only 1500 elements are shown in a figure. when i save this figure, it will still contain data that is not shown in the figure.

The answer may be particularly useful for people working with matlab2tikz.

Answer 1

Yes, the data are still there. To remove data, use something like this:

>> plot(1:10,(1:10).^2); % just an example
>> h = get(gca,'Children');
>> x = get(h,'XData')

x =

     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9    10

>> y = get(h,'YData')

y =

     1     4     9    16    25    36    49    64    81   100

>> set(h,'XData',x(2:5), 'YData',y(2:5))
>> set(h,'XData',x(2:5), 'YData',y(2:5))