Matplotlib plt.xlabel() vs ax.set_xlabel()

Question

I am using some code that uses the singleton-version of matplotlib in Python, i.e. it has calls like

plt.figure()
...
plt.xlabel(\"abc\")

Answer 1

Matplotlib had the pyplot interface, and then later developed the object-oriented interface, as described in the documentation (https://matplotlib.org/3.2.1/tutorials/introductory/lifecycle.html).

The latter is now preferred, so use fig, ax = plt.subplots and then use the setter method on ax.