Great question! Let me break this down clearly for you:

Yes, the AxesSubplot class is definitely defined in the matplotlib.axes._subplots submodule. Here’s why you might not have spotted this in official docs:

• The leading underscore in _subplots marks it as an internal implementation module within Matplotlib. These modules are part of the library's backend logic, not intended for direct use by end users, so they’re excluded from public documentation to avoid encouraging reliance on unstable internal details.
• AxesSubplot is a subclass of the public matplotlib.axes.Axes class, built specifically for subplot scenarios. When Seaborn functions like swarmplot create an axes object automatically (when you don’t pass an existing ax parameter), they’re instantiating this subclass under the hood.
• You can confirm this directly with a simple check:

  print(ax.__module__)
  

  Running this line will output matplotlib.axes._subplots, which explicitly points to the class’s definition location.

As a best practice, you don’t need to interact with the _subplots module directly—stick to public APIs like plt.subplots() or let Seaborn handle axes creation, and you’ll avoid tying your code to internal Matplotlib details that could change across versions.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者user9026