pylab matplotlib “show” waits until window closes

Question

I\'d like to have the matplotlib \"show\" command return to the command line while displaying the plot. Most other plot packages, like R, do this. But pylab hangs until the

Answer 1

Add pylab.ion() (interactive mode) before the pylab.show() call. That will make the UI run in a separate thread and the call to show will return immediately.

Answer 2

You need to run it as

$ ipython --pylab 

and run your code as

In [8]: x = arange(0,10,.1)

In [9]: y = sin(x)

In [10]: plot(x,y,'ro-')

Out[10]: [<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x2f2fd50>]

In [11]: 

This gives you the prompt for cases where you would want to modify other parts or plot more.