Why does MATLAB crash when I run the following script to place markers on a texture?

When running the attached script in MATLAB R2014a, everything runs as planned.

A texture is pasted onto a rectangle in 3D space and some markers are drawn on top.

But if you close the figure and run each cell again individually (in cell mode using CTRL+Enter), MATLAB crashes.

Why is this happening? Is there a bug in 'plot3'.

[Geoff Hayes]

That is bizarre. I took your script (actually made it a function by writing function ProblemScript as the first line in the file) and re-ran multiple times from the Command Window without any problems. At each time, I could see the red stars (because of the 'r*' in plot3) on the image. I then put a breakpoint at the line

 plot3(Posies(1,:),Posies(2,:),Posies(3,:),'r*')

I ran the code, and when the debugger paused at this line I pressed Step and MATLAB crashed. This was repeatable whenever the code paused at this line (because of the breakpoint) and I pressed Step.

I then removed the 'r*' from the the plot3 command and tried it again with the breakpoint. I didn't have a problem. I added the 'r' and did not have any problems. As soon as I added, in this case, 'r.' the crash occurred again.

So all this to say that yes I was able to observe the same behaviour with R2014a (on a Mac). According to the documentation (from help plot3):

plot3(X,Y,Z,s) where s is a 1, 2 or 3 character string made from the characters listed under the PLOT command.

Your fourth input, 'r*' is valid and works when in a script or function and it is called without any breakpoints... But with the breakpoint (or in your manner, running the same code line by line in the Command Window) the software will crash.

This may be a bug that should be brought to The MathWorks attention.

[Tyler]

Thanks Geoff. I appreciate your efforts confirming the issue. I'm now convinced there is a bug in the plot3 code.

You may (and possibly MathWorks) be interested to learn I first came across the issue in a 'for loop'. It would execute many iterations just fine but on a particular loop (same iteration each time, i.e. repeatable) it would cause MATLAB to crash. Nothing appeared any different to any other loop. I created the script in its current form just to demonstrate the behaviour.

A crash report has been sent to MathWorks.

[Geoff Hayes]

That is interesting, Tyler. Good to bring it to MathWorks attention!