python - How to show two figures using matplotlib?

Question

I have some troubles while drawing two figures at the same time, not shown in a single plot. But according to the documentation, I wrote the code and only the figure one shows. I think maybe I lost something important. Could anyone help me to figure out? Thanks. (The *tlist_first* used in the code is a list of data.)

plt.figure(1)
plt.hist(tlist_first, bins=2000000, normed = True, histtype ="step", cumulative = True, color = 'g',label = 'first answer')
plt.ylabel('Percentage of answered questions')
plt.xlabel('Minutes elapsed after questions are posted')

plt.axvline(x = 30, ymin = 0, ymax = 1, color = 'r', linestyle = '--', label = '30 min')
plt.axvline(x = 60, ymin = 0, ymax = 1, color = 'c', linestyle = '--', label = '1 hour')
plt.legend()
plt.xlim(0,120)
plt.ylim(0,1) 
plt.show()
plt.close() ### not working either with this line or without it

plt.figure(2)
plt.hist(tlist_first, bins=2000000, normed = True, histtype ="step", cumulative = True, color = 'g',label = 'first answer')

plt.ylabel('Percentage of answered questions')
plt.xlabel('Minutes elapsed after questions are posted')

plt.axvline(x = 240, ymin = 0, ymax = 1, color = 'r', linestyle = '--', label = '30 min')
plt.axvline(x = 1440, ymin = 0, ymax = 1, color = 'c', linestyle = '--', label = '1 hour')
plt.legend(loc= 4)
plt.xlim(0,2640)
plt.ylim(0,1)
plt.show()

Answer 1

Alternatively to calling plt.show() at the end of the script, you can also control each figure separately doing:

f = plt.figure(1)
plt.hist........
............
f.show()

g = plt.figure(2)
plt.hist(........
................
g.show()

raw_input()

In this case you must call raw_input to keep the figures alive. This way you can select dynamically which figures you want to show

Note: raw_input() was renamed to input() in Python 3