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Jul 27, 2023
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Move pylab documentation to its own module page #26396

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7 changes: 1 addition & 6 deletions doc/api/index.rst
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Expand Up @@ -80,12 +80,6 @@ Further reading:

.. _api-index:

The pylab API (discouraged)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. automodule:: pylab
:no-members:

Modules
-------

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -162,3 +156,4 @@ Alphabetical list of modules:
toolkits/mplot3d.rst
toolkits/axes_grid1.rst
toolkits/axisartist.rst
pylab.rst
6 changes: 6 additions & 0 deletions doc/api/pylab.rst
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@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
*********
``pylab``
*********

.. automodule:: pylab
:no-members:
28 changes: 19 additions & 9 deletions lib/matplotlib/pylab.py
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@@ -1,14 +1,24 @@
"""
`pylab` is a historic interface and its use is strongly discouraged. The equivalent
replacement is `matplotlib.pyplot`. See :ref:` api_interfaces` for a full overview
of Matplotlib interfaces.

`pylab` was designed to support a MATLAB-like way of working with all plotting related
functions directly available in the global namespace. This was achieved through a
wildcard import (``from pylab import *``).

.. warning::
Since heavily importing into the global namespace may result in unexpected
behavior, the use of pylab is strongly discouraged. Use `matplotlib.pyplot`
instead.

`pylab` is a module that includes `matplotlib.pyplot`, `numpy`, `numpy.fft`,
`numpy.linalg`, `numpy.random`, and some additional functions, all within
a single namespace. Its original purpose was to mimic a MATLAB-like way
of working by importing all functions into the global namespace. This is
considered bad style nowadays.
The use of `pylab` is discouraged for the following reasons:

``from pylab import *`` imports all the functions from `matplotlib.pyplot`, `numpy`,
`numpy.fft`, `numpy.linalg`, and `numpy.random`, and some additional functions into
the global namespace.

Such a pattern is nowadays considered bad practice, as it clutters the global
namespace. Even more severely, in the case of `pylab`, this will overwrite some
builtin functions (e.g. the builtin `sum` will be replaced by `numpy.sum`), which
can lead to unexpected behavior.

"""

from matplotlib.cbook import flatten, silent_list
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