First Example in hello_world tutorial doesn't show the circuit image [Arch Linux]

[OmegaTwiddle]

URL to the relevant documentation

I'm following the tutorial at https://docs.quantum.ibm.com/guides/hello-world

If I follow Step 1 line for line, my script just exits without printing or displaying anything.

Select all that apply

• typo
• code bug
• out-of-date content
• broken link
• other

Describe the fix.

I needed to add the below code to get it to show anything (this wasn't obvious to me).

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt 
plt.show()

[frankharkins]

Hi @OmegaTwiddle, how are you running the code examples?

I've seen this confusion before when users run code examples in a Python script: Our documentation is written in Jupyter notebooks. In notebooks, the output of the last line of a cell is displayed right after the cell. In the case of qc.draw(), the output is a matplotlib figure, which has a rich representation (image). That's why you see the image immediately after the cell.

I do wonder if there's a way we can make this clearer to users though.

EDIT: I've since realised we do have a comment about that in the same code cell:

# Return a drawing of the circuit using MatPlotLib ("mpl"). This is the
# last line of the cell, so the drawing appears in the cell output.
# Remove the "mpl" argument to get a text drawing.

Do you remember if you saw this comment? I'm wondering how we could make it clearer to future readers.