how to draw empty plot on jupyter notebook instead address?

Question

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

%matplotlib inline

fig=plt.figure()

plt.show()

Output is:

matplotlib.figure.Figure at 0x536ea70

I want to see empty plot and i was going through a pycon tutorial the same code produced a empty plot.

I don't think it is a dupe @Agile_Eagle, the magic line `%matplotlib inline` does not have the desired effect any longer; at somemoment, it was replaced by `%matplotlib notebook` — Reblochon Masque, Aug 09 '18 at 06:42
@ReblochonMasque Here is [the answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/34222212/2947502) under the dup-target. — techraf, Aug 09 '18 at 06:46
@ReblochonMasque that answer is already there in the original question : https://stackoverflow.com/a/34222212/9871094 — Agile_Eagle, Aug 09 '18 at 06:47
I don't understand why this question got downvoted. It's also not a duplicate. The question asks for plotting an empty plot with the inline backend. — ImportanceOfBeingErnest, Aug 09 '18 at 10:29

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 09 '18 at 10:36

IPython will not generate any output for figures that do not contain an axes.

If you add an axes to your figure, the figure will show fine.

%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

plt.show()

or

%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.gca()

plt.show()

If you then remove the axes, it will again show the returned python string again.

The solution to show a completely empty figure with the inline backend is hence to add an axes but then turn it invisible.

%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.set_visible(False)

plt.show()

1 Answers1