Dear matplotlib developers,

The docstring for the new method axes.set_prop_cycle, says that it can take any iterable for the property value. However, I found that it fails with a ValueError if given a numpy.ndarray. Here is a minimal working example:

from __future__ import print_function
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import cm

cmap = cm.Set1(np.linspace(0,1,9))
print(type(cmap),'\n')

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.set_prop_cycle('color', cmap.tolist())    # works
ax.set_prop_cycle('color', cmap)    # raises ValueError
plt.show()

which produces this traceback:

<type 'numpy.ndarray'> 

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/untitled.py", line 12, in <module>
    ax.set_prop_cycle('color', cmap)    # raises ValueError
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/axes/_base.py", line 1112, in set_prop_cycle
    prop_cycle = cycler(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/rcsetup.py", line 720, in cycler
    vals = validator(vals)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/rcsetup.py", line 90, in f
    raise ValueError(msg)
ValueError: 's' must be of type [ string | list | tuple ]

Tested with matplotlib 1.5.0, python 2.7 and python 3.5, running in Arch Linux.
This failure in matplotlib 1.5.0 also affects the method axes.set_color_cycle, which is supposed to be deprecated but raises a ValueError instead. The following code worked in matplotlib 1.4.3 but fails in 1.5.0:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import cm

cmap = cm.Set1(np.linspace(0,1,9))

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.set_color_cycle(cmap)    # raises ValueError
plt.show()

I think that, for convenience and for backwards compatibility with prior versions of axes.set_color_cycle, the new method axes.set_prop_cycle should be able to take any iterable, as the documentation suggests, and not be limited to only a string, list, or tuple.

Thank you,