[ENH]: Request for linestyle='.' and linestyle='.-' in plt.plot

[Hari-Shankar-Karthik]

Problem

It gets difficult to remember whether it is ls='-.' or ls='.-' for the alternating dash and dot linestyle in plt.plot. Similarly for the dotted line, I feel that ls='.' makes far more sense than ls=':'.

Proposed solution

It is a really simple fix. All one needs to do is add appropriate OR conditions in the correct places. I would be happy to do it if you would allow so. Thanks!

[timhoffm]

Thanks for the suggestion.

Note that the long name is "dashdot" (which is consistent with TeX and MATLAB), so "-." makes sense. I'm +/-0 on adding '.-', but I'm inclined if we do that, it should not be an alias, but the line should start with the dot then as well.

I'm -1 on adding '.' as an alias to ':'. While plot(x, y, ls='.') could be made to work. The shorthand markerformat plot(x, y, '.') is already reserved for the dot-marker, so it would not work there and that incongruence would be more confusing than just having to learn ':' is the shorthand for a dotted line.