How to plot data from multiple two column text files with legends in Matplotlib?

matplotlib, numpy, python

Solution

This is relatively simple if you use pylab (included with matplotlib) instead of matplotlib directly. Start off with a list of filenames and legend names, like [ ('name of file 1', 'label 1'), ('name of file 2', 'label 2'), ...]. Then you can use something like the following:

import pylab

datalist = [ ( pylab.loadtxt(filename), label ) for filename, label in list_of_files ]

for data, label in datalist:
    pylab.plot( data[:,0], data[:,1], label=label )

pylab.legend()
pylab.title("Title of Plot")
pylab.xlabel("X Axis Label")
pylab.ylabel("Y Axis Label")

You also might want to add something like fmt='o' to the plot command, in order to change from a line to points. By default, matplotlib with pylab plots onto the same figure without clearing it, so you can just run the plot command multiple times.

Problem

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