Warning

This documentation covers a development version of IPython. The development version may differ significantly from the latest stable release.

Important

This documentation covers IPython versions 6.0 and higher. Beginning with version 6.0, IPython stopped supporting compatibility with Python versions lower than 3.3 including all versions of Python 2.7.

If you are looking for an IPython version compatible with Python 2.7, please use the IPython 5.x LTS release and refer to its documentation (LTS is the long term support release).

7.x Series¶

IPython 7.5.0¶

IPython 7.5.0 consist mostly of bug-fixes, and documentation updates, with one minor new feature. The Audio display element can now be assigned an element id when displayed in browser. See PR #11670

The major outstanding bug fix correct a change of behavior that was introduce in 7.4.0 where some cell magics would not be able to access or modify global scope when using the @needs_local_scope decorator. This was typically encountered with the %%time and %%timeit magics. See #11659 and PR #11698.

IPython 7.4.0¶

Unicode name completions¶

Previously, we provided completion for a unicode name with its relative symbol. With this, now IPython provides complete suggestions to unicode name symbols.

As on the PR, if user types \LAT<tab>, IPython provides a list of possible completions. In this case, it would be something like:

'LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A',
'LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B',
'LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C',
'LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D',
....

This help to type unicode character that do not have short latex aliases, and have long unicode names. for example Ͱ, \GREEK CAPITAL LETTER HETA.

This feature was contributed by Luciana Marques PR #11583.

Make audio normalization optional¶

Added ‘normalize’ argument to IPython.display.Audio. This argument applies when audio data is given as an array of samples. The default of normalize=True preserves prior behavior of normalizing the audio to the maximum possible range. Setting to False disables normalization.

Miscelanious¶

Fix improper acceptation of return outside of functions. PR #11641.

Fixed PyQt 5.11 backwards incompatibility causing sip import failure. PR #11613.

Fix Bug where type? would crash IPython. PR #1608.

Allow to apply @needs_local_scope to cell magics for convenience. PR #11542.

IPython 7.3.0¶

IPython 7.3.0 bring several bug fixes and small improvements that you will described bellow.

The biggest change to this release is the implementation of the %conda and %pip magics, that will attempt to install packages in the current environment. You may still need to restart your interpreter or kernel for the change to be taken into account, but it should simplify installation of packages into remote environment. Installing using pip/conda from the command line is still the prefer method.

The %pip magic was already present, but was only printing a warning; now it will actually forward commands to pip.

Misc bug fixes and improvements:

Compatibility with Python 3.8.

Do not expand shell variable in execution magics, and added the no_var_expand decorator for magic requiring a similar functionality PR #11516

Add %pip and %conda magic PR #11524

Re-initialize posix aliases after a %reset PR #11528

Allow the IPython command line to run *.ipynb files PR #11529

IPython 7.2.0¶

IPython 7.2.0 brings minor bugfixes, improvements, and new configuration options:

Fix a bug preventing PySide2 GUI integration from working PR #11464

Run CI on Mac OS ! PR #11471

Fix IPython “Demo” mode. PR #11498

Fix %run magic with path in name PR #11499

Fix: add CWD to sys.path after stdlib PR #11502

Better rendering of signatures, especially long ones. PR #11505

Re-enable jedi by default if it’s installed PR #11506

Add New minimal exception reporting mode (useful for educational purpose). See PR #11509

Added ability to show subclasses when using pinfo and other utilities¶

When using ?/?? on a class, IPython will now list the first 10 subclasses.

Special Thanks to Chris Mentzel of the Moore Foundation for this feature. Chris is one of the people who played a critical role in IPython/Jupyter getting funding.

We are grateful for all the help Chris has given us over the years, and we’re now proud to have code contributed by Chris in IPython.

OSMagics.cd_force_quiet configuration option¶

You can set this option to force the %cd magic to behave as if -q was passed:

In [1]: cd /
/

In [2]: %config OSMagics.cd_force_quiet = True

In [3]: cd /tmp

In [4]:

See PR #11491

In vi editing mode, whether the prompt includes the current vi mode can now be configured¶

Set the TerminalInteractiveShell.prompt_includes_vi_mode to a boolean value (default: True) to control this feature. See PR #11492

IPython 7.1.0¶

IPython 7.1.0 is the first minor release after 7.0.0 and mostly brings fixes to new features, internal refactoring, and fixes for regressions that happened during the 6.x->7.x transition. It also brings Compatibility with Python 3.7.1, as we’re unwillingly relying on a bug in CPython.

New Core Dev:

We welcome Jonathan Slenders to the commiters. Jonathan has done a fantastic work on prompt_toolkit, and we’d like to recognise his impact by giving him commit rights. #11397

Notable Changes

Major update of “latex to unicode” tab completion map (see below)

Notable New Features:

Restore functionality and documentation of the sphinx directive, which is now stricter (fail on error by daefault), has new configuration options, has a brand new documentation page IPython Sphinx Directive (which needs some cleanup). It is also now tested so we hope to have less regressions. PR #11402

IPython.display.Video now supports width and height arguments, allowing a custom width and height to be set instead of using the video’s width and height. PR #11353

Warn when using HTML('<iframe>') instead of IFrame PR #11350

Allow Dynamic switching of editing mode between vi/emacs and show normal/input mode in prompt when using vi. PR #11390. Use %config TerminalInteractiveShell.editing_mode = 'vi' or %config TerminalInteractiveShell.editing_mode = 'emacs' to dynamically switch between modes.

Notable Fixes:

Fix entering of multi-line blocks in terminal IPython, and various crashes in the new input transformation machinery PR #11354, PR #11356, PR #11358. These also fix a Compatibility bug with Python 3.7.1.

Fix moving through generator stack in ipdb PR #11266

%Magic command arguments now support quoting. PR #11330

Re-add rprint and rprinte aliases. PR #11331

Remove implicit dependency on ipython_genutils PR #11317

Make nonlocal raise SyntaxError instead of silently failing in async mode. PR #11382

Fix mishandling of magics and = ! assignment just after a dedent in nested code blocks PR #11418

Fix instructions for custom shortcuts PR #11426

Notable Internals improvements:

Use of os.scandir (Python 3 only) to speed up some file system operations. PR #11365

use perf_counter instead of clock for more precise timing results with %time PR #11376

Many thanks to all the contributors and in particular to bartskowron and tonyfast who handled some pretty complicated bugs in the input machinery. We had a number of first time contributors and maybe hacktoberfest participants that made significant contributions and helped us free some time to focus on more complicated bugs.

You can see all the closed issues and Merged PR, new features and fixes here.

Unicode Completion update¶

In IPython 7.1 the Unicode completion map has been updated and synchronized with the Julia language.

Added and removed character characters:

\jmath (ȷ), \\underleftrightarrow (U+034D, combining) have been added, while \\textasciicaron have been removed

Some sequences have seen their prefix removed:

6 characters \text...<tab> should now be inputed with \...<tab> directly,

45 characters \Elz...<tab> should now be inputed with \...<tab> directly,

65 characters \B...<tab> should now be inputed with \...<tab> directly,

450 characters \m...<tab> should now be inputed with \...<tab> directly,

Some sequences have seen their prefix shortened:

5 characters \mitBbb...<tab> should now be inputed with \bbi...<tab> directly,

52 characters \mit...<tab> should now be inputed with \i...<tab> directly,

216 characters \mbfit...<tab> should now be inputed with \bi...<tab> directly,

222 characters \mbf...<tab> should now be inputed with \b...<tab> directly,

A couple of characters had their sequence simplified:

ð, type \dh<tab>, instead of \eth<tab>

ħ, type \hbar<tab>, instead of \Elzxh<tab>

ɸ, type \ltphi<tab>, instead of \textphi<tab>

ϴ, type \varTheta<tab>, instead of \textTheta<tab>

ℇ, type \eulermascheroni<tab>, instead of \Eulerconst<tab>

ℎ, type \planck<tab>, instead of \Planckconst<tab>

U+0336 (COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY), type \strike<tab>, instead of \Elzbar<tab>.

A couple of sequences have been updated:

\varepsilon now gives ɛ (GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON) instead of ε (GREEK LUNATE EPSILON SYMBOL),

\underbar now gives U+0331 (COMBINING MACRON BELOW) instead of U+0332 (COMBINING LOW LINE).

IPython 7.0.0¶

Released Thursday September 27th, 2018

IPython 7 includes major feature improvements. This is also the second major version of IPython to support only Python 3 – starting at Python 3.4. Python 2 is still community-supported on the bugfix only 5.x branch, but we remind you that Python 2 “end of life” is on Jan 1st 2020.

We were able to backport bug fixes to the 5.x branch thanks to our backport bot which backported more than 70 Pull-Requests, but there are still many PRs that required manual work. This is an area of the project where you can easily contribute by looking for PRs that still need manual backport

The IPython 6.x branch will likely not see any further release unless critical bugs are found.

Make sure you have pip > 9.0 before upgrading. You should be able to update by running:

pip install ipython --upgrade

If you are trying to install or update an alpha, beta, or rc version, use pip --pre flag.

pip install ipython --upgrade --pre

Or, if you have conda installed:

conda install ipython

Prompt Toolkit 2.0¶

IPython 7.0+ now uses prompt_toolkit 2.0. If you still need to use an earlier prompt_toolkit version, you may need to pin IPython to <7.0.

Autowait: Asynchronous REPL¶

Staring with IPython 7.0 on Python 3.6+, IPython can automatically await top level code. You should not need to access an event loop or runner yourself. To learn more, read the Asynchronous in REPL: Autoawait section of our docs, see PR #11265, or try the following code:

Python 3.6.0
Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
IPython 7.0.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.

In [1]: import aiohttp
   ...: result = aiohttp.get('https://api.github.com')

In [2]: response = await result
<pause for a few 100s ms>

In [3]: await response.json()
Out[3]:
{'authorizations_url': 'https://api.github.com/authorizations',
 'code_search_url': 'https://api.github.com/search/code?q={query}{&page,per_page,sort,order}',
...
}

Note

Async integration is experimental code, behavior may change or be removed between Python and IPython versions without warnings.

Integration is by default with asyncio, but other libraries can be configured – like curio or trio – to improve concurrency in the REPL:

In [1]: %autoawait trio

In [2]: import trio

In [3]: async def child(i):
   ...:     print("   child %s goes to sleep"%i)
   ...:     await trio.sleep(2)
   ...:     print("   child %s wakes up"%i)

In [4]: print('parent start')
   ...: async with trio.open_nursery() as n:
   ...:     for i in range(3):
   ...:         n.spawn(child, i)
   ...: print('parent end')
parent start
   child 2 goes to sleep
   child 0 goes to sleep
   child 1 goes to sleep
   <about 2 seconds pause>
   child 2 wakes up
   child 1 wakes up
   child 0 wakes up
parent end

See Asynchronous in REPL: Autoawait for more information.

Asynchronous code in a Notebook interface or any other frontend using the Jupyter Protocol will require further updates to the IPykernel package.

Non-Asynchronous code¶

As the internal API of IPython is now asynchronous, IPython needs to run under an event loop. In order to allow many workflows, (like using the %run magic, or copy-pasting code that explicitly starts/stop event loop), when top-level code is detected as not being asynchronous, IPython code is advanced via a pseudo-synchronous runner, and may not advance pending tasks.

Change to Nested Embed¶

The introduction of the ability to run async code had some effect on the IPython.embed() API. By default, embed will not allow you to run asynchronous code unless an event loop is specified.

Effects on Magics¶

Some magics will not work with async until they’re updated. Contributions welcome.

Expected Future changes¶

We expect more internal but public IPython functions to become async, and will likely end up having a persistent event loop while IPython is running.

Thanks¶

This release took more than a year in the making. The code was rebased a number of times; leading to commit authorship that may have been lost in the final Pull-Request. Huge thanks to many people for contribution, discussion, code, documentation, use-cases: dalejung, danielballan, ellisonbg, fperez, gnestor, minrk, njsmith, pganssle, tacaswell, takluyver , vidartf … And many others.

Autoreload Improvement¶

The magic %autoreload 2 now captures new methods added to classes. Earlier, only methods existing as of the initial import were being tracked and updated.

This new feature helps dual environment development - Jupyter+IDE - where the code gradually moves from notebook cells to package files as it gets structured.

Example: An instance of the class MyClass will be able to access the method cube() after it is uncommented and the file file1.py is saved on disk.

# notebook

from mymodule import MyClass
first = MyClass(5)

# mymodule/file1.py

class MyClass:

    def __init__(self, a=10):
        self.a = a

    def square(self):
        print('compute square')
        return self.a*self.a

    # def cube(self):
    #     print('compute cube')
    #     return self.a*self.a*self.a

Misc¶

The autoindent feature that was deprecated in 5.x was re-enabled and un-deprecated in PR #11257

Make %run -n -i ... work correctly. Earlier, if %run was passed both arguments, -n would be silently ignored. See PR #10308

The %%script (as well as %%bash, %%ruby… ) cell magics now raise by default if the return code of the given code is non-zero (thus halting execution of further cells in a notebook). The behavior can be disable by passing the --no-raise-error flag.

Deprecations¶

A couple of unused functions and methods have been deprecated and will be removed in future versions:

IPython.utils.io.raw_print_err

IPython.utils.io.raw_print

Backwards incompatible changes¶

The API for transforming input before it is parsed as Python code has been completely redesigned: any custom input transformations will need to be rewritten. See Custom input transformation for details of the new API.