Formatting string ticklabels matplotlib

Question

I have a set of ticklabels that are strings on my x axis, and I want to be able to get -> modify -> set them. Say for example I have a plot that looks like this:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(range(1,6), range(5))
plt.xticks(range(1,6), ['a','b','c','d','e']

and I want to change the labels on the x axis to ['(a)','(b)','(c)','(d)','(e)']

what is the simplest/best way to do this? I've tried things like:

labels = ['(%s)' % l for l in ax.xaxis.get_ticklabels()]
ax.xaxis.set_ticklabels(labels)

but ax.xaxis.get_ticklabels() returns matplotlib Text objects as opposed to a list of strings and I'm not sure how to go about modifying them. I also tried using matplotlib.ticker.FuncFormatter but could only get a hold of the numeric positions not the labels themselves. Any would be appreciated.

cphlewis · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-11 23:15:48Z

5

One more layer to unpeel:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(range(1,6), range(5))
plt.xticks(range(1,6), ['a','b','c','d','e'])

labels = ['(%s)' % l.get_text() for l in ax.xaxis.get_ticklabels()]
ax.xaxis.set_ticklabels(labels)

your code but with l.get_text() in the list comp where there was a l.

answered May 11, 2015 at 23:15

cphlewis

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1 Comment

pbreach Over a year ago

Wow I was looking through the Text object methods and completely missed that one... Thanks!

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