How can I remove the top and right axis in matplotlib?

Question

Instead of the default "boxed" axis style I want to have only the left and bottom axis, i.e.:

+------+         |
|      |         |
|      |   --->  |
|      |         |
+------+         +-------

This should be easy, but I can't find the necessary options in the docs.

Answer 1

that ability was actually just added, and you need the SVN version for it. you can see the example code here.

just updating to say that there's a better example online now. still need the svn version though, there hasn't been a release with this yet.

[edit] matplotlib 0.99.0 rc1 was just released, and includes this capability.

Answer 2

If you don't need ticks and such (e.g. for plotting qualitative illustrations) you could also use this quick workaround:

Make the axis invisible (e.g. with plt.axes(frame_on=False)) and then draw them manually with plt.arrow.