How to remove lines in a Matplotlib plot

Question

How can I remove a line (or lines) of a matplotlib axes in such a way as it actually gets garbage collected and releases the memory back? The below code appears to delete t

Answer 1

I'm showing that a combination of lines.pop(0) l.remove() and del l does the trick.

from matplotlib import pyplot
import numpy, weakref
a = numpy.arange(int(1e3))
fig = pyplot.Figure()
ax  = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1)
lines = ax.plot(a)

l = lines.pop(0)
wl = weakref.ref(l)  # create a weak reference to see if references still exist
#                      to this object
print wl  # not dead
l.remove()
print wl  # not dead
del l
print wl  # dead  (remove either of the steps above and this is still live)

I checked your large dataset and the release of the memory is confirmed on the system monitor as well.

Of course the simpler way (when not trouble-shooting) would be to pop it from the list and call remove on the line object without creating a hard reference to it:

lines.pop(0).remove()