Matplotlib plots aren't shown when running file from bash terminal

Plots are normally shown when I run files from the ipython shell or from an ipython notebook, but they don't show up when I run the file from a bash terminal -- everything else works fine when is run from a bash terminal.

Sample python script (trial.py):

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

print 'please, show my graph'

plt.plot([1,2,3], [1,2,3])

plt.show()

This is what I get (plot doesn't show up):

[~/Desktop]$ python trial.py
please, show my graph
[~/Desktop]$

If I do

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('TkAgg')

before importing pyplot, then a window opens and closes immediately when I run it from the terminal.

I've tried different ways of importing modules without success:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.pylab as plt
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import pylab as plt

I have the plt.show() function in my file.

Do you know how I can fix it?

Some info about versions and installation:

I'm on a mac OSX 10.11.3.

In [61]: print matplotlib.__file__
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/__init__.pyc

In [62]: print matplotlib.__version__
1.4.2

In [64]: print sys.version
2.7.9 (default, Apr  7 2015, 07:58:25)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 6.0 (clang-600.0.57)]

In [65]: matplotlib.get_backend()
Out[65]: u'MacOSX'

Solution 1:

You need to add matplotlib.pyplot.show() in your code to show plots in non-interactive mode. See docs at http://matplotlib.org/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot.show

After further info from OP, blocking had to be enabled explicitly using plt.show(block=True).