User`s guide

8 Programming a GUIDE GUI

Using Only the Index of the Selected Menu Item

This example retrieves only the index of the item selected. It uses a switch

statementtotakeactionbasedonthevalue. Ifthecontentsofthepop-up

menu are f ixed, then you can use this approach. Else, you can use the index

to retrieve the actual string for the selected item.

function popupm enu1 _Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)

val = get(hObject,'Value');

switch val

case 1

% User selected the first item

case 2

% User selected the second item

% Proceed with callback...

You can also select a menu item programm atically by setting the pop-up

Value property to the index o f the desired item . For example,

set(handles.popupmenu1,'Value',2)

selects the second item in the pop-up menu with Tag property popupmenu1.

Using the Index to Determine the Selected String

This example retrieves the actual string selected in the pop-up menu. It

uses the pop-up m enu

Value property to index into the list of strings. This

approach may be useful if your program dynamically loads the contents of the

pop-up m enu based o n user action and you need to obtain the selected string.

Note that it is necessary to convert the value returned by the

String property

from a cell array to a string.

function popupm enu1 _Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)

val = get(hObject,'Value');

string_list = get(hObject,'String');

selected_string = string_list{val}; % Convert from cell array

% to string

% Proceed with callback...

Panel

Panels group GUI components and can make a GUI easier to understand by

visually grouping related controls. A panel can contain panels and button

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