Is there an IPython equivalent to Bash's semicolon?

Question

I use IPython as my interactive shell and I almost always run two commands at the start - something like:

%run helper_functions.py
data = import_data('file_with_data')

I would like a notation to run these two at the same time (so I could recall them with an "up" arrow from history) akin to what echo 1 ; echo 2 does in Bash.

I am aware that I can start IPython running with a script as per How can I start IPython running a script? .

• tobias_k: from file_that_runs_helper_functions_and_defines_data import data

Answer 1

Semicolon is a valid statement separator in Python, the same as the newline, so you can use it with regular commands:

a=5; a=a+1; print "This is a: %s" % a

Anyway, as pointed out by tobias_k, this is not working with "run" which is a special IPython macro (see the IPython built-in magic commands) and changes the command line interpretation. Instead of %run helper_functions.py; data = import_data('file_with_data'), you could use something almost equivalent:

__builtin__.execfile('helper_functions.py') ; data = import_data('file_with_data')

You don't have the trace in IPython, but still your script is executed and the variables are in your interactive namespace.

• tobias_k: This does not seem to work. ; must not be directly after file name, and data seems not to be defined afterwards.
• sup: a = 1, b = 2 indeed does work, but the magic %run seems to cause problems, when I then run %run stuff.py ; b = 3, b is still 2.