Question

I have a loop where i create some plots and I need unique marker for each plot. I think about creating function, which returns random symbol, and use it in my program in this way:

for i in xrange(len(y)):
    plt.plot(x, y [i], randomMarker())

but I think this way is not good one.
I need this just to distinguish plots on legend, because plots must be not connected with lines, they must be just sets of dots.

Answer 1

itertools.cycle will iterate over a list or tuple indefinitely. This is preferable to a function which randomly picks markers for you.

Python 2.x

import itertools
marker = itertools.cycle((',', '+', '.', 'o', '*')) 
for n in y:
    plt.plot(x,n, marker = marker.next(), linestyle='')

Python 3.x

import itertools
marker = itertools.cycle((',', '+', '.', 'o', '*')) 
for n in y:
    plt.plot(x,n, marker = next(marker), linestyle='')

You can use that to produce a plot like this (Python 2.x):

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import itertools

x = np.linspace(0,2,10)
y = np.sin(x)

marker = itertools.cycle((',', '+', '.', 'o', '*')) 

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)

for q,p in zip(x,y):
    ax.plot(q,p, linestyle = '', marker=marker.next())
    
plt.show()