Question

I have several plt.plot instances and I wanted to only plt.show() certain objects. To illustrate here is some code:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

ax1 = plt.plot(range(5),range(5))
ax2 = plt.plot([x+1 for x in range(5)],[x+1 for x in range(5)])
ax3 = plt.plot([x+2 for x in range(5)],[x+2 for x in range(5)])

#plt.show([ax1,ax2])
plt.show()

So I would like something like the commented out statement, to display only ax1 & ax2 in the example figure.

Answer 1

You can remove some of the plotted lines from the set of lines of the current axes:

axes = plt.gca()  # Get current axes
axes.lines.remove(ax2[0])  # Removes the (first and only) line created in ax2
plt.draw()  # Updates the graph (in interactive mode)

If you want to put it back, you can similarly do

axes.lines.append(ax2[0])  # Puts the line back (the drawing order is changed, here)

You could alternatively save the current graph lines, if you need to put them back later:

all_lines = list(axes.lines)  # Copy
# ...
axes.lines[:] = all_lines  # All lines put back

The key point is that each plot() command adds a line to the current axes and draws it (in interactive mode). So you can either remove already plotted lines (like in this answer).

As Yann pointed out, you can also make some lines invisible. However, the method from this answer is probably faster, since there are fewer lines to be drawn (if this matters).