Run IPython in a script

Question

I am trying to do some scripting with IPython, but I am finding that it behaves very differently in a script to when I run an interactive shell.

For example, I can run the following interactively:

In [1]: %profile
default
In [2]: ls /
bin/ cdrom/ etc/ initrd.img@ lib/ lib64/ media/ opt/ root/ sbin/ sys/ usr/ vmlinuz@
boot/ dev/ home/ initrd.img.old@ lib32/ lost+found/ mnt/ proc/ run/ srv/ tmp/ var/ vmlinuz.old@
In [3]: mkdir tmpdir
In [4]: cd tmpdir
/home/alex/tmp/tmpdir

No problem.

However, none of these commands works when I run them in a script:

#!/usr/bin/ipython3
%profile
ls /
mkdir tmpdir
cd tmdir

I get an error:

$ ./tmp.py 
 File "/home/alex/tmp/tmp.ipython", line 3
 %profile
 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I have tried running this by:

1. calling the file directly as above,
2. calling it explicitly with ipython: `ipython3 tmp.py'
3. passing the -i or --profile=sh arguments to ipython when calling it with ipython
4. changing the file extension to .ipython and .ipy

My question: Why is it behaving differently in a script to the shell? How can I get IPython to run these commands in a script?

Answer 1

They are working due to IPython magic but they are shell commands and do not work in Python. To get them consider the subprocess library. Where you would have spaces in a shell command instead have comma-separated values in the list.

import subprocess
subprocess.check_call(['ls'])
subprocess.check_call(['ls', '-a'])

• Alex: I was hoping to get the advantages of the IPython magic, but in a script form... is there any reason that this sort of thing should be available in a shell but not a script?
• Mark: I don't have any experience with this but have you tried importing IPython? My understanding is that these functions are part of IPython so if you are not in that environment then you don't have access to them.
• Alex: Just tried that and it had no effect. I assumed that because I am selecting IPython as the interpreter it would be doing this anyway...
• Mark: I've never seen it done in the manner you describe. That would be cool. But perhaps they wouldn't be called "magic" anymore!!
• Alex: I'm not sure I'm understanding the difference... what's the difference between typing lines into an IPython shell manually, and IPython reading those same lines from a file?