python SyntaxError: invalid syntax %matplotlib inline

Question

I got this error in my python script:

%matplotlib inline
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

from utils import progress_bar_downloader
import os
#Hosting files on my dropbox since downloading from google code is painful
#Original project hosting is here: https://code.google.com/p/hmm-speech-recognition/downloads/list
#Audio is included in the zip file
link = 'https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15378192/audio.tar.gz'
dlname = 'audio.tar.gz'

if not os.path.exists('./%s' % dlname):
    progress_bar_downloader(link, dlname)
    os.system('tar xzf %s' % dlname)
else:
    print('%s already downloaded!' % dlname)

I want use matplotlib but it gives syntax error, I tried sudo apt-get install python-matplotlib

Answer 1

if you are not using Jupyter IPython notebook, just comment out (or delete) the line, everything will work fine and a separate plot window will be opened if you are running your python script from the console.

However, if you are using Jupyter IPython notebook, the very first python code cell in your notebook should have the line "%matplotlib inline" for you to be able to view any plot.

Answer 2

"%matplotlib inline" isn't valid python code, so you can't put it in a script.

I assume you're using a Jupyter notebook? If so, put it in the first cell and all should work.