[FIXED] Reserved whitespace in matplotlib legend label

Issue

Let's say I have two arrays.

array1 = ['foofoo', 'bar']
array2 = ['foo', 'bar']

I could print each possible combination of these two arrays as such.

for A in array1:
    for B in array2:
        print('{} {}'.format(A, B))
>>>
foofoo foo
foofoo bar
bar foo
bar bar

That's pretty ugly, so I can reserve whitespace when printing so the second part aligns, like so:

for A in array1:
    for B in array2:
        print('{:7s} {}'.format(A, B))
>>>
foofoo  foo
foofoo  bar
bar     foo
bar     bar

That's much prettier. I tried to do the same for the legend labels, however it does not work:

x = np.linspace(0,50, 100)

array1 = ['foofoo', 'bar']
array2 = ['foo', 'bar']

for A in array1:
    for B in array2:

        y = [random.random() for x in x]
        y.sort()

        legend_label = r"{:7s} {}".format(A, B)
        plt.plot(x,y, label=legend_label)
    
plt.legend()

How can I achieve the desired behaviour of reserving whitespace within the matplotlib legend labels, so that I could align it within columns as shown in the print('{:7s} {}'.format(A, B)) example.

Solution

You need to use a monospace font to be able to align on the number of characters:

plt.legend(prop={'family': 'monospace'})

output:

Answered By - mozway