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 in python?

Solution 1:

According to the doc you could find them by doing this :

from matplotlib import lines
lines.lineStyles.keys()
>>> ['', ' ', 'None', '--', '-.', '-', ':']

You can do the same with markers

EDIT: In the latest versions, there are still the same styles, but you can vary the space between dots/lines.

Solution 2:

plot documentation

http://matplotlib.org/1.5.3/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot.plot has a list of line + marker styles:

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

Since this is part of the pyplot.plot docstring, you can also see it from the terminal with:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
help(plt.plot)

Solution 3:

From my experience it is nice to have the colors and markers in a list so I can iterate through them when plotting.

Here's how I obtain the list of such things. It took some digging.

import matplotlib
colors_array = matplotlib.colors.cnames.keys()
markers_array = matplotlib.markers.MarkerStyle.markers.keys()

Solution 4:

You can copy the dictionary from the Linestyle example:

from collections import OrderedDict

linestyles = OrderedDict(
    [('solid',               (0, ())),
     ('loosely dotted',      (0, (1, 10))),
     ('dotted',              (0, (1, 5))),
     ('densely dotted',      (0, (1, 1))),

     ('loosely dashed',      (0, (5, 10))),
     ('dashed',              (0, (5, 5))),
     ('densely dashed',      (0, (5, 1))),

     ('loosely dashdotted',  (0, (3, 10, 1, 10))),
     ('dashdotted',          (0, (3, 5, 1, 5))),
     ('densely dashdotted',  (0, (3, 1, 1, 1))),

     ('loosely dashdotdotted', (0, (3, 10, 1, 10, 1, 10))),
     ('dashdotdotted',         (0, (3, 5, 1, 5, 1, 5))),
     ('densely dashdotdotted', (0, (3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)))])

You can then iterate over the linestyles

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

X, Y = np.linspace(0, 100, 10), np.zeros(10)
for i, (name, linestyle) in enumerate(linestyles.items()):
    ax.plot(X, Y+i, linestyle=linestyle, linewidth=1.5, color='black')

ax.set_ylim(-0.5, len(linestyles)-0.5)

plt.show()

Or you just take a single linestyle out of those,

ax.plot([0,100], [0,1], linestyle=linestyles['loosely dashdotdotted'])