How to save a figure in MATLAB from the command line?

Use saveas:

h=figure;
plot(x,y,'-bs','Linewidth',1.4,'Markersize',10);
% ...
saveas(h,name,'fig')
saveas(h,name,'jpg')

This way, the figure is plotted, and automatically saved to ‘.jpg’ and ‘.fig’. You don’t need to wait for the plot to appear and click ‘save as’ in the menu. Way to go if you need to plot/save a lot of figures.

If you really do not want to let the plot appear (it has to be loaded anyway, can’t avoid that, else there is also nothing to save), you can hide it:

h=figure('visible','off')