How to decrease the size of the legend in a figure?

Question

The following code plots a figure. The code should work on Matlab >= R2014b. I want to remove the space within the legend. How to do this?

x = 0:0.5:10;
figure; hold on;
plot(x,sin(x), 'Marker', 'o');
plot(x,cos(x), 'Marker', 's');
[leg, objs] = legend({'sin', 'cos'}, 'Location', 'SouthWest');
line_start_end = [0.01, 0.4];
line_text_step = 0.01;
% for each line, text object, adjust their position in legend
for i = 1:numel(objs)   
  if strcmp(get(objs(i), 'Type'), 'line')
    % line object
    if 2 == numel(get(objs(i), 'XData')) % line 
      set(objs(i), 'XData', line_start_end);
    else % marker on line
      set(objs(i), 'XData', sum(line_start_end)/2);
    end
  else
    %text object
    text_pos = get(objs(i), 'Position');
    text_pos(1) = line_start_end(2) + line_text_step;
    set(objs(i), 'Position', text_pos);
  end
end

See the following result:

What I want is :

Answer 1

There is a submission named resizeLegend by David J. Mack on File Exchange that does exactly that.

You can replace your loop with just this line:

resizeLegend(); 

which gives:

Answer 2

As @Sardar Usama suggested, I put my solution here. I hope it is useful for you.

The first answer is nice. However, I finally use the following code to do this task.

close all

x = 0:0.5:10;
figure; hold on;
ph(1) = plot(x,sin(x), 'Marker', 'o');
ph(2) = plot(x,cos(x), 'Marker', 's');

ax = gca;
ax.Box = 'on';

bx = axes('position', [ax.Position(1:2), 0.3, 0.4], 'Box', 'on', 'XTick', [], 'YTick', []);%, 'Color', [0.8549,0.7020,1.0000]);
cx = axes('position', [ax.Position(1:2), 0.3, 0.4], 'Box', 'on', 'XTick', [], 'YTick', []);%, 'Color', [0.8549,0.5020,1.0000]);

[legb, objsb] = legend(bx, ph, {'sin', 'cos'}, 'Location', 'SouthWest');
[legc, objsc] = legend(cx, ph, {'sin', 'cos'}, 'Location', 'SouthWest');

line_start_end = [0.01, 0.3];
line_text_step = 0.05;

legendshrink(ax.Position(1:2), legb, objsb, bx, line_start_end, line_text_step);
legendshrink(ax.Position(1:2), legc, objsc, cx, line_start_end, line_text_step);

% you need only to adjust cx' position.
cx.Position(1:2) = [ax.Position(1)+ax.Position(3)-cx.Position(3), ax.Position(2)];
legc.Position(1:2) = cx.Position(1:2);

where legendshrink is defined as:

function legendshrink(leg_pos_xy, leg, objs, bx, line_start_end, line_text_step)

% leg_post_xy = ax.Position(1:2);
% [leg, objs] = legend(bx, line_handles, text_cell);
% line_start_end = [0.01, 0.4];
% line_text_step = 0.01;

% for each line, text object, adjust their position in legend
for i = 1:numel(objs)
  if strcmp(get(objs(i), 'Type'), 'line')
    % line object
    if 2 == numel(get(objs(i), 'XData')) % line 
      set(objs(i), 'XData', line_start_end);
    else % marker on line
      set(objs(i), 'XData', sum(line_start_end)/2);
    end
  else
    %text object
    text_pos = get(objs(i), 'Position');
    text_pos(1) = line_start_end(2) + line_text_step;
    set(objs(i), 'Position', text_pos);
  end
end

% get minimum possible width and height
legend_width_no_right = 0;
for i = 1:numel(objs)
  % legend margin left
  if strcmp(get(objs(i), 'Type'), 'line')
    if numel(get(objs(i), 'XData')) == 2
      leg_margin_x = get(objs(i), 'XData');
      leg_margin_x = leg_margin_x(1)*leg.Position(3);
    end
  else
    cur_right = get(objs(i), 'Extent');
    cur_right = (cur_right(1)+cur_right(3))*leg.Position(3);
    if cur_right > legend_width_no_right
      legend_width_no_right = cur_right;
    end
  end
end
legend_width  = legend_width_no_right + leg_margin_x;
legend_height = leg.Position(4);

bx.Position = [leg_pos_xy, legend_width, legend_height];
leg.Position(1:2) = bx.Position(1:2);
leg.Box = 'off';

end

resulting