matplotlib plot and then wait for raw input

Question

I am trying to open a series of .png plots. I want to be able to view a plot on the screen and then get a prompt waiting for me to 'press enter'. On hitting enter, the next plot should be shown. I have seen many questions similar to this (Matplotlib - Force plot display and then return to main code) but when I do this I then have to manually click X on the top right-hand-side of the plot window to close it and only then does the code continue.

I am using python 2.7.8

Here is my code:

from PIL import Image
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.image as mpimg
import string
import sys
import shutil

fig=plt.figure()

Viewingfile = sys.argv[1]


for test_file in open(Viewingfile, "r").readlines(): 

    fig.set_tight_layout(True)
    plt.ion()
    image=mpimg.imread(test_file + ".ps.png")
    ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1)
    imgplot = plt.imshow(image)
    plt.show()

    print test_file
    a = raw_input('Next plot?\n')
    if a == "1":
        print "Do something..I've skipped these details"
    plt.clf()

plt.close()

Answer 1

With recent version of matplotlib, you can use the call plt.show(block=False) to open the matplotlib window non-blocking.