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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Support subplots((m, n), ...) as shorthand for subplots(m, n, squeeze=False, ...)","articleBody":"\u003c!--\r\nWelcome! Thanks for thinking of a way to improve Matplotlib.\r\n\r\n\r\nBefore creating a new feature request please search the issues for relevant feature requests.\r\n--\u003e\r\n\r\n### Problem\r\n\r\n`subplots()` defaults to auto-squeezing the returned Axes array (returning a single array when one is requested, returning a 1D array when a single row or single column is requested), likely for practicality, but this makes dynamic layouts pretty annoying: if you write `axs = fig.subplots(m, n)` where `m` and `n` are somehow dynamically computed (based on some dataset characteristics) and then later plan to use `axs[i, j]`, you basically have an IndexError waiting to happen unless you can be certain that `m` and `n` are never 1.  Of course one can remember to always write `subplots(..., squeeze=False)`, but that's a bit verbose.\r\n\r\n### Proposed Solution\r\n\r\nMy preferred solution would probably have been to make the default `m` and `n` not 1, but None, so that None means \"1 in that direction, and squeeze that direction\" whereas 1 just means 1 (without squeezing).  This would have fixed most common cases, e.g. if you write `subplots()` you get a single axes, `subplots(3)` or `subplots(nrows=3)` or `subplots(ncols=3)` you get a 1D array, `subplots(m, n)` (where `m` and `n` are dynamically computed variables) you always get a 2D array.  I think in practice the main back-incompatibility of this proposal that occurs in real life is `subplots(1, 3)` (single row, likely not so uncommon), which would typically have to be written `subplots(None, 3)` or `subplots(ncols=3)` or `fig, (axs,) = subplots(3)` (for the additional unpacking).\r\n\r\nAssuming that this backcompat breakage is not acceptable (it likely is not), one alternative would be to change the signature of `subplots()` to also support taking a single *2-tuple* as argument (rather than `nrows` and `ncols` separately, and make `subplots((m, n))` never squeeze the input.  (Likely we wouldn't bother supporting `m` or `n` being None, in that case.)  Then it would be OK to retrain my muscle memory to just always add an extra pair of parentheses when calling `subplots`.\r\n\r\n### Additional context and prior art\r\n\r\n\u003c!-- Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here. You can also include links to examples of other programs that have something similar to your request. For example:\r\n\r\n* Another project [...] solved this by [...]\r\n--\u003e","author":{"url":"https://github.com/anntzer","@type":"Person","name":"anntzer"},"datePublished":"2021-02-05T15:55:30.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":11},"url":"https://github.com/19463/matplotlib/issues/19463"}