Skip to content

scatter could not raise when colors are provided but position data are empty #14113

Closed
@mwaskom

Description

@mwaskom

The 3.0.x series added new checks in scatter for equivalence between the length of the x, y vectors and the length of the c vectors.

These changes have broken code in seaborn that sometimes calls scatter with empty position data but non-empty color data, e.g.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
f, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.scatter([], [], c=["r", "b", "g"])
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
~/anaconda/envs/seaborn-dev/lib/python3.6/site-packages/matplotlib/axes/_axes.py in scatter(self, x, y, s, c, marker, cmap, norm, vmin, vmax, alpha, linewidths, verts, edgecolors, **kwargs)
   4237                     valid_shape = False
-> 4238                     raise ValueError
   4239             except ValueError:

ValueError: 

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-2-41dfae030a6e> in <module>()
      1 import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
      2 f, ax = plt.subplots()
----> 3 ax.scatter([], [], c=["r", "b", "g"])

~/anaconda/envs/seaborn-dev/lib/python3.6/site-packages/matplotlib/__init__.py in inner(ax, data, *args, **kwargs)
   1808                         "the Matplotlib list!)" % (label_namer, func.__name__),
   1809                         RuntimeWarning, stacklevel=2)
-> 1810             return func(ax, *args, **kwargs)
   1811 
   1812         inner.__doc__ = _add_data_doc(inner.__doc__,

~/anaconda/envs/seaborn-dev/lib/python3.6/site-packages/matplotlib/axes/_axes.py in scatter(self, x, y, s, c, marker, cmap, norm, vmin, vmax, alpha, linewidths, verts, edgecolors, **kwargs)
   4243                         "acceptable for use with 'x' with size {xs}, "
   4244                         "'y' with size {ys}."
-> 4245                         .format(nc=n_elem, xs=x.size, ys=y.size)
   4246                     )
   4247                 # Both the mapping *and* the RGBA conversion failed: pretty

ValueError: 'c' argument has 3 elements, which is not acceptable for use with 'x' with size 0, 'y' with size 0.

IMO this is an unnecessary exception because it conflicts with another patten in matplotlib, which is passing empty data along with specified style attributes (e.g. to create a proxy artist). I appreciate that the c parameter occupies a fuzzy zone between data and style attribute. But specifically in the case when the position data are empty, no points will have the wrong colors.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    Release criticalFor bugs that make the library unusable (segfaults, incorrect plots, etc) and major regressions.

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions