Matlab - How to use strings instead of numbers in bar figure

Question

I want to obtain a Matlab figure using the bar function but when the actual figure is plotted instead of displaying the numbers underneath each bar I want to display which represents that actual value plotted.

For example I am having the vector x = [1 2 3] and instead of showing 1, 2 and 3 beneath each plotted bar, I want to display a string corresponding to one of these values y = {'sam'; 'alan'; 'ellie'}

Could you please explain how could I obtain this?

Answer 1

x = [1 2 3];
str = {'sam'; 'alan'; 'ellie'};
bar(x)
set(gca, 'XTickLabel',str, 'XTick',1:numel(str))

Answer 2

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/21178

Labels = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'd'};
set(gca, 'XTick', 1:4, 'XTickLabel', Labels);

if you need to change the Y-labels then substitute YTickLabel for XTickLabel