Interactively Display graphs in matplotlib in python

Question

For the life of me, I can not get matplotlib to display graphs in ipython inactively.

I've tried two approaches - each time, I get the same results:

In [10]: plot([1,2,3])
Out[10]: [<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x104e9ca50>]

Here are the two approaches I have tried so far: Using the documentation as a guide, I tried two different approaches:

First:

ipython --pylab

plot([1,2,3])
xlabel('hi mom')

In [3]: plot([1,2,3])
Out[3]: [<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x107e369d0>]

Second:

ipython
import numpy
import pylab

In [5]: pylab.plot([1,2,3])
Out[5]: [<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x104ca7b90>]

How do I get the plot to display?

Answer 1

It's possible you have a non-GUI backend set. Try doing pylab.get_backend() to see what backend you have set. Look at the documentation here and here to see how to set your backend.