Matlab - get subplot rows and columns

Question

I'm writing a script to resize any figure given to me, and I'd like to get the rows and columns of a subplot. For instance, if someone gave me a figure created by:

hfig = figure;
haxes = subplot(3,4,1);
...

Is there a property in the figure or axes handles that tells me that the figure has 3 rows and 4 columns? I need to resize each axis, and knowing the rows and columns is important so I know how to resize them.

Answer 1

No, there is no such property. There is only 'Position' property for axes object. What subplot function does is calculate proper axes position.

You can find all the axes on a figure with ax = findobj(gcf,'type','axes');. Then get positions with get(ax,'position') and analyze them for number of rows and columns.

For example:

pos = cell2mat(get(ax,'position'));
nrows = numel(unique(pos(:,2))); % the same Y position means the same row
ncols = numel(unique(pos(:,1))); % the same X position means the same column

Notice however that it will analyze only existing axes. If only two axes were created with subplot(221) and subplot(222) you will get 1 row, not 2.