Bug summary

The functions matplotlib.rc and matplotlib.pyplot.rc process settings given as named parameters. Named parameters can't contain hyphens; therefore, it is impossible to set font.sans-serif so because it contains a hyphen.

It is possible to set the parameter by different means, but this seems like the main way, so I consider that it does not work a significant shortcoming. How else this parameter can be set:

• matplotlib.rcParams["font.sans-serif"] = "Fira Sans"
• matplotlib.rc("font", **{"sans-serif": "Fira Sans"})

Code for reproduction

from matplotlib import rc
rc("font", sans-serif="Fira Sans")

Actual outcome

>>> from matplotlib import rc
>>> rc("font", sans-serif="Fira Sans")
  File "<python-input-1>", line 1
    rc("font", sans-serif="Fira Sans")
               ^^^^^^^^^^^
SyntaxError: expression cannot contain assignment, perhaps you meant "=="?

Expected outcome

I think that that the parameter is named font.sans-serif is a mistake, and it should be named something like font.sans_serif with an underscore. It may be too late to change that, but an alias would work. rc already has aliases like lw → linewidth, ls → linestyle, c → color. I expect that there would be an alias like sans → sans-serif so I could use rc("font", sans="Fira Sans").

Additional information

No response

Operating system

No response

Matplotlib Version

3.10.1

Matplotlib Backend

No response

Python version

Python 3.13.3

Jupyter version

No response

Installation

None