Question

Is there any possibility to get lines and points into a legend text in matplotlib?
I had something in mind like the following

x=np.linspace(0,10,100)
ys=np.sin(x)
yc=np.cos(x)
pl.plot(x,ys,'--',label='sin')
pl.plot(x,yc,':',label='derivative of --')
pl.legend()
pl.show()

except that instead of the -- there should be the same symbol with the corresponding color just as in front of the legend label sin.

Answer 1

After reading around in the matplotlib source code I finally found a solution that works perfect for me and that does not need any position tweaking etc. as it used matplotlibs internal V- and HPackers.

import numpy as np
import pylab as pl

x=np.linspace(0,10,100)
ys=np.sin(x)
yc=np.cos(x)

pl.plot(x,ys,'--',label='sin')
pl.plot(x,yc,':',label='derivative of')
leg=pl.legend()

# let the hacking begin
legrows = leg.get_children()[0].get_children()[1]\
             .get_children()[0].get_children()
symbol  = legrows[0].get_children()[0]
childs  = legrows[1].get_children().append(symbol)

pl.show()

The result looks as follows: