'hold off' produces second plot in MATLAB Live Script (2024)

Thank you for your answer. Your explanation matches exactly my impressions, still I do not fully understand the logic behind. I built up another test case:

First cell:

Second cell:

This creates THREE diagrams, twice the first and once the second.

It does not matter if I put the semicolon or not.

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Then I put the content of the second cell into a file "myTest.m" and run

First cell:

Second cell:

This creates TWO diagrams, once the first and once the second.

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Then I put the code of my second cell into one line

First cell:

Second cell:

This again creates TWO diagrams, once the first and once the second.

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I am an experienced MATLAB user, but for me it feels like a bug to get THREE diagrams in the first case.

I think for the first scenario you meant:

"THREE diagrams, once the first and twice the second"

When calling hold off at the section break, the Live Editor tries to preserve the state of the current runtime figure by cloning it. This is because the content of the figure may be cleared. That explains the first scenario above.

The second scenario creates two figures as it is a MATLAB script instead of a MATLAB live script.

The third scenario occurs because when multiple commands are written in the same line in a live script, the commands run in order from left to right and each command overwrites the behaviour of the previous command. Hence, the output of only the last command is displayed, resulting in ONE figure. This behaviour may be checked by the following examples:

Example 1: The following when written in one cell, results in TWO figures, one figure for each line:

Example 2: The above commands when written inthe same line result in ONE figure, which is the output of the rightmost command: