How can I edit x label so it doesn't overlap each other?

This is my code at the moment,

figure(1)

bar(tabel_bus.jumlah_bus);

set(gca,'Xticklabel',tabel_bus.rute_tujuan)

grid on

xlabel('Rute Tujuan'); ylabel('Jumlah Bus');

title('Jumlah Bus Tiap Rute')

This is how my bar chart look,

Answer 1

[Aashray]

Hi @Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi!

I understand that you are plotting a bar chart where the x-axis labels (route names) are quite long, and they currently overlap each other. This happens because by default MATLAB places labels horizontally, so when they are long and there are many of them, they cannot fit nicely.

A simple way to fix this is to rotate the labels using “xtickangle”.

Here is a small example with dummy data that shows the approach:

% Sample data 
jumlah_bus = [3 7 12 5 9 11]; 
rute_tujuan = { ... 
    'BLOK M - CILEDUG', ... 
    'CAWANG - PGC', ... 
    'PLUMPANG - LINCING', ... 
    'PERINTIS - PANTENG', ... 
    'SUNTER - PRUMO', ... 
    'DUREN KOSAMBI - KAMAL'}; 

% Create figure 
figure 
bar(jumlah_bus); 

% Apply labels 
set(gca,'XTickLabel',rute_tujuan) 

% Rotate to avoid overlap 
xtickangle(45); 

xlabel('Rute Tujuan'); 
ylabel('Jumlah Bus'); 
title('Jumlah Bus Tiap Rute'); 
grid on 

This will show each route on two stacked lines, making the axis less cluttered.

Here are documentation links of the functions I used for reference:

• “xtickangle”: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/xtickangle.html
• “bar”: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/bar.html