Running Scripts from IPython

IPython has a %%script cell magic, which lets you run a cell in a subprocess of any interpreter on your system, such as: bash, ruby, perl, zsh, R, etc.

It can even be a script of your own, which expects input on stdin.



In [1]:

    
import sys

To use it, simply pass a path or shell command to the program you want to run on the %%script line, and the rest of the cell will be run by that script, and stdout/err from the subprocess are captured and displayed.



In [2]:

    
%%script python
import sys
print 'hello from Python %s' % sys.version









    



hello from Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Jul 31 2011, 19:30:53) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2335.15.00)]



In [3]:

    
%%script python3
import sys
print('hello from Python: %s' % sys.version)









    



hello from Python: 3.2.3 (v3.2.3:3d0686d90f55, Apr 10 2012, 11:25:50) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)]

IPython also creates aliases for a few common interpreters, such as bash, ruby, perl, etc.

These are all equivalent to %%script <name>



In [4]:

    
%%ruby
puts "Hello from Ruby #{RUBY_VERSION}"









    



Hello from Ruby 1.8.7



In [5]:

    
%%bash
echo "hello from $BASH"









    



hello from /usr/local/bin/bash

Capturing output

You can also capture stdout/err from these subprocesses into Python variables, instead of letting them go directly to stdout/err



In [6]:

    
%%bash
echo "hi, stdout"
echo "hello, stderr" >&2









    



hi, stdout






    



hello, stderr



In [7]:

    
%%bash --out output --err error
echo "hi, stdout"
echo "hello, stderr" >&2



In [8]:

    
print error
print output









    



hello, stderr

hi, stdout

Background Scripts

These scripts can be run in the background, by adding the --bg flag.

When you do this, output is discarded unless you use the --out/err flags to store output as above.



In [9]:

    
%%ruby --bg --out ruby_lines
for n in 1...10
    sleep 1
    puts "line #{n}"
    STDOUT.flush
end









    



Starting job # 0 in a separate thread.

When you do store output of a background thread, these are the stdout/err pipes, rather than the text of the output.



In [10]:

    
ruby_lines









    Out[10]:





<open file '<fdopen>', mode 'rb' at 0x10a4be660>



In [11]:

    
print ruby_lines.read()









    



line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
line 5
line 6
line 7
line 8
line 9

Arguments to subcommand

You can pass arguments the subcommand as well, such as this example instructing Python to use integer division from Python 3:



In [12]:

    
%%script python -Qnew
print 1/3









    



0.333333333333

You can really specify any program for %%script, for instance here is a 'program' that echos the lines of stdin, with delays between each line.



In [13]:

    
%%script --bg --out bashout bash -c "while read line; do echo $line; sleep 1; done"
line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
line 5









    



Starting job # 2 in a separate thread.

Remember, since the output of a background script is just the stdout pipe, you can read it as lines become available:



In [14]:

    
import time
tic = time.time()
line = True
while True:
    line = bashout.readline()
    if not line:
        break
    sys.stdout.write("%.1fs: %s" %(time.time()-tic, line))
    sys.stdout.flush()









    



0.0s: line 1
1.0s: line 2
2.0s: line 3
3.0s: line 4
4.0s: line 5

Configuring the default ScriptMagics

The list of aliased script magics is configurable.

The default is to pick from a few common interpreters, and use them if found, but you can specify your own in ipython_config.py:

c.ScriptMagics.scripts = ['R', 'pypy', 'myprogram']

And if any of these programs do not apear on your default PATH, then you would also need to specify their location with:

c.ScriptMagics.script_paths = {'myprogram': '/opt/path/to/myprogram'}