should i switch to IPYTHON interpreter? What is the killer feature of it?

[Sean Richards]

seberino at spawar.navy.mil (Christian Seberino) writes:

> I know IPython is another interpreter for Python and was wondering
> what people liked about it and if I should switch to it.

Some things i like are .....

Typing ? after a function name gives you the function definition and
docstrings for the function. i.e arange? returns

Type:           builtin_function_or_method
Base Class:     <type 'builtin_function_or_method'>
String Form:    <built-in function arange>
Namespace:      Interactive
Docstring:
    arange(start, stop=None, step=1, typecode=None)
    
     Just like range() except it returns an array whose type can be
    specified by the keyword argument typecode.

Normal shell commands like cd & ls are available

Tab completion for keywords and methods etc (you can get this in the
standard python shell as well of course)

Heaps more features but those are the killers for me (YMMV)

> If it is so good then why is it not part of the standard Python
> tarball?

No idea. It's no big deal for me to download it separately and install
it. You could ask the same question about many other Python packages,
if they were all included the distribution would start getting a bit
big I think.

Anyway give IPython a try I think you will like it.

Sean

-- 
"Hver sin smak", sa vintapperen, han drakk mens de andre sloss.