[python-uk] 2nd London Python Dojo - 18:30 15 October 2009 at Fry-IT

[Dave Kirby]

As Tim says, ipython is a superset of the regular python shell, so you
can ignore all the features and get along with it just fine.

The features I find most useful (and which I think will be of benefit
to the dojo) are context-sensitive tab completion and the help system.
 Using these is an order of magnitude faster than looking things up in
the docs and works for any modules or objects that ipython can see.

It also has a bunch of built-in commands such as 'cd', 'ls', 'rm',
'cp' etc for accessing the filesystem, 'time' and 'timeit' for timing
fragments of code, 'run' to execute a file in the namespace of the
interactive session, 'ed' to edit text in a text editor and execute
the code as if it was typed at the prompt, and many more.

Dave