I have a simple python script which plots some graphs in the same figure. All graphs are created by the draw() and in the end I call the show() function to block.
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Had the inverse problem, and it seems that matplotlib will work in interactive or non-interaxctive mode based on a number of things that I could not trace (One way in IDLE, another in system console, one way in normal spyder console, another in a dedicated one ...)
This worked for me:
import matplotlib
matplotlib.interactive(False)
(Actually, I wanted interactive mode, but in your case the inverse should help.)
ion() and ioff() should do the same but the above is on matplotlib's level, not just pyplot or pylab. This works for me although I'm (later) importing pyplot separately and never call matplotlib as such again. I'm thinking that plt.ion() only has an effect on pyplot, not other components of matplotlib that may or may not be involved when using pyplot.
This method works for me on Windows 7, using both Python 2.65 with matplotlib 0.99 and Python 2.75 with matplotlib 1.3.1, across all available python consoles and IDEs on both systems (64-bit, both of them). It did, however, not work on Linux (SuSe 11.3, 64 bit), so there is definitely some platform dependency at play here