Linestyle in matplotlib step function

python matplotlib linestyle
user2061207 picture user2061207 · Mar 3, 2013 · Viewed 25k times · Source

Is it possible to set the linestyle in a matplotlib step function to dashed, dotted, etc.?

I've tried: 

step(x, linestyle='--'), 
step(x, '--')

But it did not help.

Answer

tacaswell picture tacaswell · Mar 3, 2013

As of mpl 1.3.0 this is fixed upstream

You have to come at it a bit sideways as step seems to ignore linestyle. If you look at what step is doing underneath, it is just a thin wrapper for plot.

You can do what you want by talking to plot directly:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.plot(range(5), range(5), linestyle='--', drawstyle='steps')
plt.plot(range(5), range(5)[::-1], linestyle=':', drawstyle='steps')
plt.xlim([-1, 5])
plt.ylim([-1, 5])

example

['steps', 'steps-pre', 'steps-mid', 'steps-post'] are the valid values for drawstyle and control where the step is drawn.

Pull request resulting from this question, I personally think this is a bug. [edit: this has been pulled into master and should show up in v1.3.0].

Related questions

Is there a list of line styles in matplotlib?

I'm writing a script that will do some plotting. I want it to plot several data series, each with its unique line style (not color). I can easily iterate through a list, but is there such a list already available …

Read More
python matplotlib dash-dot-dot - how to?

I am using python and matplotlib to generate graphical output. Is there a simple way to generate a dash-dot-dot line-style? I am aware of the '--', '-.', and ':' options. Unfortunately, '-..' does not result in a …

Read More
How to change the linestyle of whiskers in pandas boxplots?

Is there a way to change the linestyle of the whiskers in pandas boxplots to '-'? Default seems to be '--'. I have tried: color = dict(boxes='black', whiskers='black', medians='red', caps='black') styles=dict(whiskers='-') bp = df.…

Read More