Memory overflow when saving Matplotlib plots in a loop

Question

I am using an iterative loop to plot soame data using Matplotlib. When the code has saved around 768 plots, it throws the following exception.

RuntimeError:          


        

Answer 1

Are you remembering to close your figures when you are done with them? e.g.:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

#generate figure here
#...
plt.close(fig)  #release resources associated with fig

Answer 2

As a slightly different answer, remember that you can re-use figures. Something like:

fig = plt.figure()
ax = plt.gca()

im = ax.imshow(data_list[0],...)

for new_data in data_list:
    im.set_cdata(new_data)
    fig.savefig(..)

Which will make your code run much faster as it will not need to set up and tear down the figure 700+ times.