plot window not showing up in matplotlib

Question

I am trying to plot a graph using matplot lib and am not getting a window to show up:

I got this snippet of code from a demo program for contours using matplotlib.

import matplotlib
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.mlab as mlab
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
matplotlib.rcParams['xtick.direction'] = 'out'
matplotlib.rcParams['ytick.direction'] = 'out'

delta = 0.025
x = np.arange(-3.0, 3.0, delta)
y = np.arange(-2.0, 2.0, delta)
X, Y = np.meshgrid(x, y)
Z1 = mlab.bivariate_normal(X, Y, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0)
Z2 = mlab.bivariate_normal(X, Y, 1.5, 0.5, 1, 1)
# difference of Gaussians
Z = 10.0 * (Z2 - Z1)



# Create a simple contour plot with labels using default colors.  The
# inline argument to clabel will control whether the labels are draw
# over the line segments of the contour, removing the lines beneath
# the label
plt.figure()
CS = plt.contour(X, Y, Z)
plt.clabel(CS, inline=1, fontsize=10)
plt.title('Simplest default with labels')

plt.show()

Now I expect plt.show() to show a plot but alas when I run the program I do not see a plot but instead get an error message saying:

import: unable to grab mouse `': Resource temporarily unavailable @        error/xwindow.c/XSelectWindow/9047.
import: unable to grab mouse `': Resource temporarily unavailable @ error/xwindow.c/XSelectWindow/9047.
import: unable to grab mouse `': Resource temporarily unavailable @ error/xwindow.c/XSelectWindow/9047.
import: unable to grab mouse `': Resource temporarily unavailable @ error/xwindow.c/XSelectWindow/9047.
./plotter.py: line 7: matplotlib.rcParams[xtick.direction]: command not found
./plotter.py: line 8: matplotlib.rcParams[ytick.direction]: command not found
./plotter.py: line 10: delta: command not found
./plotter.py: line 11: syntax error near unexpected token `('
./plotter.py: line 11: `x = np.arange(-3.0, 3.0, delta)'

Any idea on how to resolve this issue?

Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

The code is fine, your have executed it as a shell script if I am not mistaken. You should execute it with the python interpeter.

Oper a terminal and run python script-name.py

If you have matplotlib and numpy installed you should be fine.

Answer 2

matplotlib is tricky in the standard python interpreter. ipython has better integration with matplotlib, so you might want to try using that instead of the standard python command line interpreter. It'll make your life easier on so many fronts.

ipython