stop animations with pause()

I wanna stop/break/suspend the following animation without using ctrl+c, how?

for i=1:10
    plot(linspace(0,1),linspace(0,1))
    hold on;pause(0.1);
end

Answer 1

[Shubham]

Hi Feynman,

To stop, break, or suspend an animation loop in MATLAB without using Ctrl+C, you can introduce a condition that checks for a specific event, such as a button press or a value in a figure's UserData being set. To actually stop the animation, you would need to set the UserData property of the figure to false. This could be done, for example, in a callback function from a UI control like a button. Here is an example of how you could add a button to the figure to stop the animation: Here's a simple example using a figure's UserData property to control the loop execution:

function StopAnimation
    % Create a figure
    hFig = figure;

    % Add a button to the figure with a callback that stops the loop and closes the window
    uicontrol('Style', 'pushbutton', 'String', 'Stop', ...
              'Position', [20 20 60 20], ...
              'Callback', @(src, event) stopAndClose(hFig));

    % Set the UserData property of the figure to true
    set(hFig, 'UserData', true);

    for i = 1:10
        % Check if the figure has been closed manually
        if ~ishandle(hFig)
            break;
        end
        
        % Plot the line
        plot(linspace(0, 1), linspace(0, 1));
        hold on;
        
        % Pause for a short time to see the animation
        pause(0.1);

        % Check the UserData property of the figure to see if the Stop button was pressed
        if ~get(hFig, 'UserData')
            break;  % Break the loop if UserData is set to false
        end
    end
    
    % Define the stopAndClose function
    function stopAndClose(figHandle)
        % Stop the loop by setting UserData to false
        set(figHandle, 'UserData', false);
        % Close the figure window
        close(figHandle);
    end
end

In this modified script, clicking the 'Stop' button will set the UserData property of the figure to false, which the loop checks after each iteration. If UserData is false, the loop will break, effectively stopping the animation.

[feynman feynman]

many thanks really helpful! It'll be good to also include functions to suspend (stop without breaking) or continue a loop, then one can really control the progress. Finally, is it also possible to replay the whole animation after it finished running? If there's tutorial pages on them I'll also appreciate a lot!

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

Create a uicontrol radio button to act as a stop button.

TheUIControl.Value = 0;

for i=1:10
    if TheUIControl.Value == 1
        break;
    end
    plot(linspace(0,1),linspace(0,1))
    hold on;pause(0.1);
end

[feynman feynman]

thanks but no button shows up when running your code?

[Walter Roberson]

This code assumes that you created a button using uicontrol() and assigned its handle to TheUIControl

[feynman feynman]

oh! Then I thought it would be to use sth like? But the following code doesn't work yet

TheUIControl=uicontrol('Style', 'pushbutton', 'String', 'Stop', ...
    'Position', [20 20 60 20], ...
    'Callback', @(src, event) stopAndClose(hFig));
TheUIControl.Value=0

[Walter Roberson]

TheUIControl=uicontrol('Style', 'togglebutton', 'String', 'Stop', ...
    'Position', [20 20 60 20]);
TheUIControl.Value = 0;

for i=1:10
    if TheUIControl.Value == 1
        break;
    end
    plot(linspace(0,1),linspace(0,1))
    hold on;pause(0.1);
end

[feynman feynman]

many thanks really helpful! Finally, is it also possible to replay the whole animation after it finished running? If there's tutorial pages on them I'll also appreciate a lot!