How do I pass an array of line specifications or styles to plot?

Question

I want to plot multiple lines with one call to plot(), with different line styles for each line. Here's an example:

Both

plot([1,2,3]', [4,5;6,7;8,9], {'-o', '-x'})

and

hs = plot([1,2,3]', [4,5;6,7;8,9])
set(hs, 'LineStyle', {'--'; '-'})

don't work. I've tried a whole bunch of arcane combinations with square and curly braces, but nothing seems to do the trick.

I know it's possible to loop through the columns in Y and call plot() for each one (like in this question), but that isn't what I'm after. I would really like to avoid using a loop here if possible.

Thanks.

PS: I found this 'prettyPlot' script which says it can do something like this, but I want to know if there's any built-in way of doing this.

PPS: For anyone who wants a quick solution to this, try this:

for i = 1:length(hs)
   set(hs(i), 'Marker', markers{i}); 
   set(hs(i), 'LineStyle', linestyles{i}); 
end

e.g. with markers = {'+','o','*','.','x','s','d','^','v','>','<','p','h'}

Dichromatism

Answer 1

Referring to http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/plot.html, this is how to draw multiple lines with a single plot command:

plot(X1,Y1,LineSpec1,...,Xn,Yn,LineSpecn)

So your idea of

plot([1,2,3]', [4,5;6,7;8,9], {'-o', '-x'})

must be written as:

plot([1,2,3]', [4,6,8], '-o', [1,2,3]',[5,7,9],'-x')

resulting:

Reorganize input parameters into cell arrays and use cellfun to apply plot command to each cell element.

x = [1,2,3]';
xdata = {x;x};
ydata = {[4,6,8];[5,7,9]};    
lspec = {'-o';'-x'};

hold all;
cellfun(@plot,xdata,ydata,lspec);

Ixia

Thanks for your answer. The example I gave in my question was just to show the form my data comes in, i.e. an array for X, a matrix for Y. These structures are usually really big, so manually splitting them up into separate arguments into plot() isn't really practical for me. Is there a way of passing in some sort of cell-array which magically unfolds into the parameter specification above? – Dichromatism

How about reorganizing Y1 and use cellfun to iterate the plotting function. I've added an example to the answer. – Ixia

Hey that's looking a lot better! Is there a way to permute/transform a regular i by j matrix into a cell array that looks like ydata above? Basically, to convert my numeric x array and y matrix into forms that will work with cellfun() – Dichromatism