how to display negative exponent as superscript? - octave

Question

I wish to create a 2-D plot with x-axis values: 0, 10^-2, 10^-1, 10^0, 10^1, 10^2.
I tried using semilog(x), but that does not work because the 0-value gets dropped (understandably).
So instead I am using xticklabels
datalabels = {'0', '10^-2', '10^-1', '10^0', '10^1', '10^2'};
data = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6];
plot(data);
set(gca(),"xticklabel", datalabels);
This is working fine, except for one small nit:
The x-axis labels get displayed differently, depending on whether the exponent is positive or negative. Positive exponents are displayed as superscripts. Negative exponents are not. For example, '10^-2' is displayed as '10-2', with '-2' sitting on the same baseline as '10'.
Anyone know how to enforce consistency, so all the exponents are displayed as superscripts?
UPDATE: I created a legend with a mixture of negative and positive exponents, and it looks really ugly. I now see that, in addition to inconsistently displaying the exponent as a superscript, Octave uses different fontsizes, depending on whether the exponent is negative or positive.

Answer 1

Have you tried '10^{-2}'
From this reference:
Finally, the superscript and subscripting can be controlled with the
'^' and '' characters. If the '^' or '' is followed by a {
character, then all of the block surrounded by the { } pair is super-
or sub-scripted. Without the { } pair, only the character immediately
following the '^' or '_' is super- or sub-scripted.