Matlab - What does an array definition mean

[luitzen]

I'm trying to make a MATLAB plot with two types of data, i.e. temperature and air flow rate. Since the temperature and air flow rate are on different scales I wanted two y-scales and since there are quite some data sets, I wanted to make the two air flow rates bold.

I tried this, but it doesn't work:

plotyy(time,reator_temperature_matrix,time,air_flow_matrix,'LineWidth',2)

After a long journey, I ended up here: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/81078

And saw it solved the following way:

[AX,H1,H2] = plotyy(time,reactor_temperature_matrix,time,air_flow_matrix) ;
set(H2,'LineWidth',2)

This solved my problem, though now I'm curious what [AX,H1,H2] means and I couldn't find it anywhere on the internet. What does '[AX,H1,H2] = ...' create? Can I choose any name for AX, H1 and H2?

When I go to the workspace, I see three vectors with some numbers, but they don't make any sense to me.

 

[lewando]

Those are handles. They are described, to some extent, for plotyy here:
http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/plotyy.html

You can choose any name for them.

They provide a means to control properties of objects (graphical or otherwise) directly.

See:
http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/graphics-objects.html

 

[luitzen]

Thank you very much. When I have time I'll will try to read up on handles. My plots now look exactly the way I want them to look.