The core reason is that the below sets of commands import too much into the global namespace and also they don't allow you to change the mode for matplotlib from UI to QT or something else. This was incorporated in iPython as a transition tool and the current recommendation is that you should not use it. %pylab is a shortcut for typing all of the below commands - in essence adding numpy and matplotlib into your session. The pylab interface is indeed more suitable for interactive work: from pylab import *Īnd using the pyplot interface: from matplotlib import pyplot as PLT The significance is that Matplotlib began as a shell-based plotting scheme. FP was a Ph.D student at the time and informed JH that he would not able to review the path for some time. The primary uses cases for Matplotlib when the project began, plotting in theĪpparently John Hunter (Matplotlib's creator) wanted to include interactive plotting in python so he submitted a patch to Fernando Perez's (FP) IPython project.

Why two different interfaces? Matplotlib's original interface was pylab only Indeed, pyplot has its own magic python magic function %pyplot The former is usually imported like so: from matplotlib import pyplot as PLT The awesome Matplotlib plotting library has two distinct interfaces: a pythonic one, and the original MATLAB-like one intended for plotting at the interactive prompt. Which modules? well, the ones subsumed under the pylab interface. The import of various modules within Matplotlib. When the %pylab magic function is entered at the IPython prompt, it triggers To execute a code snippet (particularly for multi-line snippets which would usually cause an _IndentationError_ to be thrown): %paste To run a script in ipython using an empty namespace, type space then a script name: %run Magic functions in ipython always begin with the percent sign (%) followed without any spaces by a small text string in essence, ipython magic functions define shortcuts particularly useful for interactive work, e.g., to give you an idea of how magic functions work in python, a few of my favorites:

Pylab module python