How do I fix the deprecation warning that comes with pylab.pause?

The pylab.pause() function has been deprecated in recent versions of matplotlib. This article shows how to suppress the deprecation warning and provides modern alternatives.

Suppressing the Deprecation Warning

You can suppress the warning using warnings.filterwarnings("ignore") before calling the deprecated function ?

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.pylab as pl
import warnings

plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = [7.50, 3.50]
plt.rcParams["figure.autolayout"] = True

warnings.filterwarnings("ignore")

pl.pause(0)
plt.show()

Modern Alternative: Using plt.pause()

Instead of using the deprecated pylab.pause(), use plt.pause() directly ?

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

# Create a simple plot
x = np.linspace(0, 10, 100)
y = np.sin(x)

plt.figure(figsize=(7.5, 3.5))
plt.plot(x, y)
plt.title("Using plt.pause() instead of pylab.pause()")

# Use plt.pause() instead of pylab.pause()
plt.pause(0.1)  # Pause for 0.1 seconds
plt.show()

Interactive Example with Animation

Here's a practical example showing how plt.pause() can be used for simple animations ?

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

plt.figure(figsize=(8, 4))

for i in range(5):
    plt.clf()  # Clear the current figure
    x = np.linspace(0, 10, 100)
    y = np.sin(x + i)
    plt.plot(x, y)
    plt.title(f"Animation Frame {i+1}")
    plt.pause(0.5)  # Pause for 0.5 seconds

plt.show()

Best Practices

Conclusion

While you can suppress deprecation warnings with warnings.filterwarnings("ignore"), it's better to replace pylab.pause() with plt.pause(). This ensures your code remains compatible with future matplotlib versions.