Locators for tick on axis

An example demoing different locators to position ticks on axis for matplotlib.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


def tickline():
    plt.xlim(0, 10), plt.ylim(-1, 1), plt.yticks([])
    ax = plt.gca()
    ax.spines["right"].set_color("none")
    ax.spines["left"].set_color("none")
    ax.spines["top"].set_color("none")
    ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position("bottom")
    ax.spines["bottom"].set_position(("data", 0))
    ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position("none")
    ax.xaxis.set_minor_locator(plt.MultipleLocator(0.1))
    ax.plot(np.arange(11), np.zeros(11))
    return ax


locators = [
    "plt.NullLocator()",
    "plt.MultipleLocator(1.0)",
    "plt.FixedLocator([0, 2, 8, 9, 10])",
    "plt.IndexLocator(3, 1)",
    "plt.LinearLocator(5)",
    "plt.LogLocator(2, [1.0])",
    "plt.AutoLocator()",
]

n_locators = len(locators)

size = 512, 40 * n_locators
dpi = 72.0
figsize = size[0] / float(dpi), size[1] / float(dpi)
fig = plt.figure(figsize=figsize, dpi=dpi)
fig.patch.set_alpha(0)


for i, locator in enumerate(locators):
    plt.subplot(n_locators, 1, i + 1)
    ax = tickline()
    ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(eval(locator))
    plt.text(5, 0.3, locator[3:], ha="center")

plt.subplots_adjust(bottom=0.01, top=0.99, left=0.01, right=0.99)
plt.show()