matlab - How to show legend for only a specific subset of curves in the plotting?

Question

t = 0 : 0.01 : 2 * pi;
s = sin(t);
c = cos(t);
m = -sin(t);

hold on;
plot(t, s, 'r');
plot(t, c, 'b');
plot(t, m, 'g');
hold off;

legend('', 'cosine', '');

There are several curves in my plotting. I want to display legend for only some of them. How do I do it?

For example, how do I make only the legend for the cosine curve visible in the plotting above? When I call the legend() functions as legend('', 'cosine'); instead of adding the empty third parameter, indeed the third green line is removed from the legend. But that doesn't solve my problem, because the undesired red line stays visible.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13685967/how-to-show-legend-for-only-a-specific-subset-of-curves-in-the-plotting

Answer 1

Just store the desired legend handles in a variable and pass the array to legend. In your case, it would only be one value, like so:

hold on;
plot(t, s, 'r');
h2 = plot(t, c, 'b');  % # Storing only the desired handle
plot(t, m, 'g');
hold off;

legend(h2, 'cosine');  % # Passing only the desired handle

You should get this plot: