Clearing a subplot in Matplotlib

Question

I have a number of subplots in a figure fig1, created via

ax = fig1.add_subplot(221)

I then plot stuff in each of the subplots via

im=ax.plot(x,y)

and add some axis labels via

ax.set_xlabel('xlabel')

I would then like to clear a specific subplot completely, as described in When to use cla(), clf() or close() for clearing a plot in matplotlib?. However the problem is that ax.cla()and ax.clear() seem to only clear the data from the plot, without removing the axes, axis tick labels etc. On the other hand plt.clf() clears the entire figure. Is there something in between? A clf-like command that clears everything in a subplot, including axis labels? Or have I simply used the commands in a wrong way?

Answer 1

• ax.clear() clears the axes. That is, it removes all settings and data from the axes such that you are left with an axes, just as it had been just created.

• ax.axis("off") turns the axes off, such that all axes spines and ticklabels are hidden.

• ax.set_visible(False) turns the complete axes invisible, including the data that is in it.

• ax.remove() removes the axes from the figure.

Complete example:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig,axes = plt.subplots(2,3)
for ax in axes.flat:
    ax.plot([2,3,1])

axes[0,1].clear()
axes[1,0].axis("off")
axes[1,1].set_visible(False)
axes[0,2].remove()

plt.show()