Documentation Link

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Problem

At first sight, the effects of (1)

ax.tick_params(axis='x', labelrotation=90)

and (2)

for label in ax.get_xticklabels():
    label.set_rotation(90)

look similar.

However, the first solution is to be preferred:

• It's shorter.
• There's a fundamental difference: Tick label instances are not stable. They may be deleted, moved around or new ones created, e.g. when you pan or zoom the plot.(1) affects all current tick labels and sets the default for future ones. (2) only modifies the current labels. That means you can get labels with a different style when you manipulate the figure. This is almost never wanted. Therefore (2) is discouraged and we should remove it from our examples.

Suggested improvement

1. Search through the examples and tutorials files. Suggest regular expression in.*ticklabels\(\)
2. Replace the for loop with a call to tick_params(). (Note: Not every property of ticks is accessible through tick_params() so there may be some rare cases that cannot be replaced as of now.)
3. Validate visually that the old and new code produce the same figure.