# Naming of Plot Commands in Sage

I've started teaching myself sage and I'm a bit confused about the naming of some commands in graphics. The most basic command for graphics is perhaps plot with its variants polar_plot, contour_plot, etc. However, I've also seen some variants of plot that are obtained from plot by adding postfixes to it; for instance, plot_vector_field.

Does anyone know the reason why some graphical commands belong to the first category (prefix_plot) and some to the second (plot_postfix)? I'm asking this because of there is a good reason for this, then it can help me remember the names more easily, and if there is no special reason this might be something to suggest for changes in future releases of sage.

PS I asked this question on stackoverflow and got a suggestion for asking it here.

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Commands like contour_plot are supposed to sound natural to (English-speaking) mathematicians, because a contour plot should be a familiar mathematical construction. plot_vector_field, on the other hand, is supposed to sound like a command to Sage: "plot this vector field".

You can always find commands that start with "plot" by typing plot and then hitting the TAB key. Another useful command is %psearch, which lets you search for commands using * as a wildcard, so you can do %psearch *plot to find commands that end in "plot", or do this:

sage: %psearch *plot*
complex_plot
contour_plot
cylindrical_plot3d
density_plot
eulers_method_2x2_plot
gnuplot
gnuplot_console
implicit_plot
implicit_plot3d
list_plot
list_plot3d
list_plot_loglog
list_plot_semilogx
list_plot_semilogy
matrix_plot
parametric_plot
parametric_plot3d
plot
plot3d
plot_loglog
plot_semilogx
plot_semilogy
plot_slope_field
plot_step_function
plot_vector_field
plot_vector_field3d
plotkin_bound_asymp
plotkin_upper_bound
polar_plot
region_plot
revolution_plot3d
scatter_plot
spherical_plot3d
toric_plotter

more