Plotext: Plotting in the Terminal

Plotext allows us to approach to how we visualize data differently, compared to a package such as matplotlib, while keeping the syntax relatively the same.

Check out the graphs using a dataset that is found on the Space Weather Prediction’s Website using both Matplotlib and Plotext:

» For the purposes of this, I’m not going to dive into the science behind what this graph is, but rather using it as a demonstration for the package.

Here’s the code I used to achieve this graph in terminal:

From a data visualization perspective, I want to point out a few differences between the graphs:

1. Matplotlib provides more of a granular view; we’re able to see more data.

2. At the peak just to the right of 1000 (on the x axis), you can’t see it peaking at 10^-5 with plotext, but with matplotlib you can (for those space weather folks, that’s an M-class flare!).

3. Plotext doesn’t automatically put the y axis into scientific notation, making it hard to depict the actual values.

What is Plotext?

As you saw above, plotext is a library that allows us to easily plot in the terminal with nearly the same syntax as matplotlib. Here’s how I achieved the above plots using xarray to open the dataset:

Just like matplotlib, you’re able to create a line or scatter plot, add plot labels (such as the title, x and y labels), create subplots, and even create a plot from matplotlib directly!

Differences: Matplotlib vs Plotext

I want to take a second to highlight some of the features by comparing it to a library you may already be familiar with: matplotlib. While terminal plotting is powerful, it does lack some capabilities other plotting libraries offer:

» I also compared Plotly, Matplotlib, and Plotext in another article.

What are some use cases for Plotext?

Plotting in the terminal is relatively niche. It absolutely is not intended to be used for in-depth data exploration. Here’s a few use cases that I can think of:

1. Pairing it with SQL - Let’s suppose that you’re using SQL to do some exploratory analysis. If there’s some wonky values, you can use plotext to visualize this data in-terminal

2. Terminal-only Applications - The application I’m working on for work is terminal-only. Thus, visualizing complex scientific data sets is quite a challenge. Terminal plotting allows us to see these data sets when we need to perform spot checking and/or real-time analysis.

3. Snapshots of monitoring - If you have certain system resources you are monitoring (such as disk usage), you can do a spot check to get a snapshot as to what’s going on on disk, in memory, etc.

To get started with Plotext, visit the Github Repository and check out the documentation.

Happy plotting!