[Matplotlib-users] Is there anything pcolor can do that pcolormesh can't?

[Joe K. <jof...@gm...>]

Until very recently<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20069545/2d-plotting-with-colors-like-spectrograms-magnitude-plots#comment29914445_20069545>,
I had somehow wound up with the impression that `pcolormesh` only handles
rectilinear coordinate arrays, while `pcolor` can handle arbitrarily shaped
quadrilaterals.

Apparently, both pcolor and pcolormesh can handle any type of
quadrilateral. For example:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

y, x = np.mgrid[:10, :10].astype(float)
x += 0.5 * np.random.random(x.shape)
y += 0.5 * np.random.random(y.shape)
z = np.random.random(x.shape)

fig, axes = plt.subplots(ncols=2)
axes[0].pcolor(x, y, z)
axes[1].pcolormesh(x, y, z)
plt.show()


Given that, is there any effective difference between `pcolor` and
`pcolormesh` other than that `pcolor` creates a `PolyCollection` and
`pcolormesh` creates a `QuadMesh`?

In other words, is there anything that `pcolor` can display that
`pcolormesh` can't?

Thanks!
-Joe