matplotlib.pyplot.plot(*args, **kwargs)

Plot lines and/or markers to the Axes. args is a variable length argument, allowing for multiple x, y pairs with an optional format string. For example, each of the following is legal:

plot(x, y) # plot x and y using default line style and color plot(x, y, 'bo') # plot x and y using blue circle markers plot(y) # plot y using x as index array 0..N-1 plot(y, 'r+') # ditto, but with red plusses

If x and/or y is 2-dimensional, then the corresponding columns will be plotted.

If used with labeled data, make sure that the color spec is not included as an element in data, as otherwise the last case plot("v","r",data={"v":..., "r":...) can be interpreted as the first case which would do plot(v, r) using the default line style and color.

If not used with labeled data (i.e., without a data argument), an arbitrary number of x, y, fmt groups can be specified, as in:

a.plot(x1, y1, 'g^', x2, y2, 'g-')

Return value is a list of lines that were added.

By default, each line is assigned a different style specified by a ‘style cycle’. To change this behavior, you can edit the axes.prop_cycle rcParam.

The following format string characters are accepted to control the line style or marker:

character description'-'solid line style'--'dashed line style'-.'dash-dot line style':'dotted line style'.'point marker','pixel marker'o'circle marker'v'triangle_down marker'^'triangle_up marker'<'triangle_left marker'>'triangle_right marker'1'tri_down marker'2'tri_up marker'3'tri_left marker'4'tri_right marker's'square marker'p'pentagon marker'*'star marker'h'hexagon1 marker'H'hexagon2 marker'+'plus marker'x'x marker'D'diamond marker'd'thin_diamond marker'|'vline marker'_'hline marker

The following color abbreviations are supported:

character color‘b’blue‘g’green‘r’red‘c’cyan‘m’magenta‘y’yellow‘k’black‘w’white

In addition, you can specify colors in many weird and wonderful ways, including full names ('green'), hex strings ('#008000'), RGB or RGBA tuples ((0,1,0,1)) or grayscale intensities as a string ('0.8'). Of these, the string specifications can be used in place of a fmtgroup,  but the tuple forms can be used only as kwargs.

Line styles and colors are combined in a single format string, as in 'bo' for blue circles.

The kwargs can be used to set line properties (any property that has a set_* method). You can use this to set a line label (for auto legends), linewidth, anitialising, marker face color, etc. Here is an example:

plot([1,2,3], [1,2,3], 'go-', label='line 1', linewidth=2) plot([1,2,3], [1,4,9], 'rs', label='line 2') axis([0, 4, 0, 10]) legend()

If you make multiple lines with one plot command, the kwargs apply to all those lines, e.g.:

plot(x1, y1, x2, y2, antialiased=False)

Neither line will be antialiased.

You do not need to use format strings, which are just abbreviations. All of the line properties can be controlled by keyword arguments. For example, you can set the color, marker, linestyle, and markercolor with:

plot(x, y, color='green', linestyle='dashed', marker='o', markerfacecolor='blue', markersize=12).

See Line2D for details.

The kwargs are Line2D properties:

Property Descriptionagg_filterunknownalphafloat (0.0 transparent through 1.0 opaque)animated[True | False]antialiased or aa[True | False]axesan Axes instanceclip_boxa matplotlib.transforms.Bbox instanceclip_on[True | False]clip_path[ (Path, Transform) | Patch | None ]color or cany matplotlib colorcontainsa callable functiondash_capstyle[‘butt’ | ‘round’ | ‘projecting’]dash_joinstyle[‘miter’ | ‘round’ | ‘bevel’]dashessequence of on/off ink in pointsdrawstyle[‘default’ | ‘steps’ | ‘steps-pre’ | ‘steps-mid’ | ‘steps-post’]figurea matplotlib.figure.Figure instancefillstyle[‘full’ | ‘left’ | ‘right’ | ‘bottom’ | ‘top’ | ‘none’]gidan id stringlabelstring or anything printable with ‘%s’ conversion.linestyle or ls[‘solid’ | ‘dashed’, ‘dashdot’, ‘dotted’ | (offset, on-off-dash-seq) | '-' | '--' | '-.' | ':' | 'None' | ' ' | '']linewidth or lwfloat value in pointsmarkerA valid marker stylemarkeredgecolor or mecany matplotlib colormarkeredgewidth or mewfloat value in pointsmarkerfacecolor or mfcany matplotlib colormarkerfacecoloralt or mfcaltany matplotlib colormarkersize or msfloatmarkevery[None | int | length-2 tuple of int | slice | list/array of int | float | length-2 tuple of float]path_effectsunknownpickerfloat distance in points or callable pick function fn(artist, event)pickradiusfloat distance in pointsrasterized[True | False | None]sketch_paramsunknownsnapunknownsolid_capstyle[‘butt’ | ‘round’ | ‘projecting’]solid_joinstyle[‘miter’ | ‘round’ | ‘bevel’]transforma matplotlib.transforms.Transform instanceurla url stringvisible[True | False]xdata1D arrayydata1D arrayzorderany number

kwargs scalex and scaley, if defined, are passed on to autoscale_view() to determine whether the x and y axes are autoscaled; the default is True.

Note

In addition to the above described arguments, this function can take a data keyword argument. If such a data argument is given, the following arguments are replaced by data[<arg>]:

All arguments with the following names: ‘x’, ‘y’.