Re: [Matplotlib-users] Feature request: additional arguments of hist()

[John H. <jdh...@ac...>]

>>>>> "K" == K KISHIMOTO <ko...@us...> writes:

    K> Hi, I'm using matplotlib for my scientific analysis, and
    K> charmed by It's function.

Thanks!

    K> Because I often use another tools for data histograming, I
    K> think it's convenient if matplotlib could plot already
    K> histogramed data more efficiently.

This seems like the kind of thing that would best be done in your user
library.  Eg, if you make a module mymatplotlib.py, you can defined
your own hist.  In that file, just import matplotlib.matlab and call
matplotlib.matlab.hist within it.  In fact, matplotlib.matlab.hist
calls matplotlib.mlab.hist.

On an unrelated topic: 

  def hist(x, bins=10, noplot=0, normed=0, weights=[], errors=[])

Just wanted to point out that this is a potential gotcha in python.
For example, what do you expect the output of this code to be?

def func1(x=[]):
    if not len(x): x.append(1)
    print x
    
def func2(y=[]):
    if len(y)<2: y.append(2)
    print y

z = []
func1(z)
func2(z)

The standard way to pass empty lists as default function args is to
do:

def func1(x=None):
    if x is None: x = []
    #blah blah    

Lists and dicts are different in this capacity than strings or ints
because the can be changed (mutable).

Thanks for your suggestions,
John Hunter