Matplotlib pyplot show() doesn't work once closed

Question

I have a loop like this

#!/usr/bin/env python
import matplotlib.pyplot as p

for i in xrange(N):
    # Create my_image here

    # Display this image
    p.figure()
    p.imshow(my_image)
    p.show()
    p.close()

This works fine when i=0. For the program to continue, I need to close the new figure created by pyplot. For all other loop iterations (i>0), another new figure is not created, a plot is not presented and the program just moves on. Why does closing a figure making pyplot unable to open new one (like MATLAB)?

The behavior which I expect is:

1. Execution stops at p.show()
2. When I close the figure, execution continues
3. When p.show() is encountered again, the new image is displayed.
4. Repeat step 2 until no more plot to show

Answer 1

There might be a better way to animate imshow's, but this should work in a pinch. It's a lightly modified version of an animation example from the docs.

# For detailed comments on animation and the techniqes used here, see
# the wiki entry http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib/Animations

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('TkAgg')

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.mlab as mlab
import matplotlib.cm as cm

import sys
import numpy as np
import time

ax = plt.subplot(111)
canvas = ax.figure.canvas

delta=0.025
x=y= np.arange(-3.0, 3.0, delta)
x,y=np.meshgrid(x, y)
z1=mlab.bivariate_normal(x, y, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0)
z2=mlab.bivariate_normal(x, y, 1.5, 0.5, 1, 1)
z=z2-z1  # difference of Gaussians

def run(z):
    fig=plt.gcf()
    for i in range(10):
        plt.imshow(z, interpolation='bilinear', cmap=cm.gray,
                  origin='lower', extent=[-3,3,-3,3])
        canvas.draw()
        plt.clf()
        z**=2

manager = plt.get_current_fig_manager()
manager.window.after(100, run, z)
plt.show()