notebooks/01.04-Input-Output-History.ipynb

{
 "cells": [
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "# Input and Output History"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "Previously you saw that the IPython shell allows you to access previous commands with the up and down arrow keys, or equivalently the Ctrl-p/Ctrl-n shortcuts.\n",
    "Additionally, in both the shell and notebooks, IPython exposes several ways to obtain the output of previous commands, as well as string versions of the commands themselves.\n",
    "We'll explore those here."
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "## IPython's In and Out Objects\n",
    "\n",
    "By now I imagine you're becoming familiar with the `In [1]:`/`Out[1]:` style of prompts used by IPython.\n",
    "But it turns out that these are not just pretty decoration: they give a clue as to how you can access previous inputs and outputs in your current session.\n",
    "Suppose we start a session that looks like this:\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [1]: import math\n",
    "\n",
    "In [2]: math.sin(2)\n",
    "Out[2]: 0.9092974268256817\n",
    "\n",
    "In [3]: math.cos(2)\n",
    "Out[3]: -0.4161468365471424\n",
    "```"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "We've imported the built-in `math` package, then computed the sine and the cosine of the number 2.\n",
    "These inputs and outputs are displayed in the shell with `In`/`Out` labels, but there's more—IPython actually creates some Python variables called `In` and `Out` that are automatically updated to reflect this history:\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [4]: In\n",
    "Out[4]: ['', 'import math', 'math.sin(2)', 'math.cos(2)', 'In']\n",
    "\n",
    "In [5]: Out\n",
    "Out[5]:\n",
    "{2: 0.9092974268256817,\n",
    " 3: -0.4161468365471424,\n",
    " 4: ['', 'import math', 'math.sin(2)', 'math.cos(2)', 'In', 'Out']}\n",
    "```"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "The `In` object is a list, which keeps track of the commands in order (the first item in the list is a placeholder so that `In [1]` can refer to the first command):\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [6]: print(In[1])\n",
    "import math\n",
    "```\n",
    "\n",
    "The `Out` object is not a list but a dictionary mapping input numbers to their outputs (if any):\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [7]: print(Out[2])\n",
    "0.9092974268256817\n",
    "```\n",
    "\n",
    "Note that not all operations have outputs: for example, `import` statements and `print` statements don't affect the output.\n",
    "The latter may be surprising, but makes sense if you consider that `print` is a function that returns `None`; for brevity, any command that returns `None` is not added to `Out`.\n",
    "\n",
    "Where this can be useful is if you want to interact with past results.\n",
    "For example, let's check the sum of `sin(2) ** 2` and `cos(2) ** 2` using the previously computed results:\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [8]: Out[2] ** 2 + Out[3] ** 2\n",
    "Out[8]: 1.0\n",
    "```\n",
    "\n",
    "The result is `1.0`, as we'd expect from the well-known trigonometric identity.\n",
    "In this case, using these previous results probably is not necessary, but it can become quite handy if you execute a very expensive computation and forget to assign the result to a variable."
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "## Underscore Shortcuts and Previous Outputs\n",
    "\n",
    "The standard Python shell contains just one simple shortcut for accessing previous output: the variable `_` (i.e., a single underscore) is kept updated with the previous output. This works in IPython as well:\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [9]: print(_)\n",
    "1.0\n",
    "```\n",
    "\n",
    "But IPython takes this a bit further—you can use a double underscore to access the second-to-last output, and a triple underscore to access the third-to-last output (skipping any commands with no output):\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [10]: print(__)\n",
    "-0.4161468365471424\n",
    "\n",
    "In [11]: print(___)\n",
    "0.9092974268256817\n",
    "```\n",
    "\n",
    "IPython stops there: more than three underscores starts to get a bit hard to count, and at that point it's easier to refer to the output by line number.\n",
    "\n",
    "There is one more shortcut I should mention, however—a shorthand for `Out[X]` is `_X` (i.e., a single underscore followed by the line number):\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [12]: Out[2]\n",
    "Out[12]: 0.9092974268256817\n",
    "\n",
    "In [13]: _2\n",
    "Out[13]: 0.9092974268256817\n",
    "```"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "## Suppressing Output\n",
    "Sometimes you might wish to suppress the output of a statement (this is perhaps most common with the plotting commands that we'll explore in [Introduction to Matplotlib](04.00-Introduction-To-Matplotlib.ipynb)).\n",
    "Or maybe the command you're executing produces a result that you'd prefer not to store in your output history, perhaps so that it can be deallocated when other references are removed.\n",
    "The easiest way to suppress the output of a command is to add a semicolon to the end of the line:\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [14]: math.sin(2) + math.cos(2);\n",
    "```\n",
    "\n",
    "The result is computed silently, and the output is neither displayed on the screen nor stored in the `Out` dictionary:\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [15]: 14 in Out\n",
    "Out[15]: False\n",
    "```"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "## Related Magic Commands\n",
    "For accessing a batch of previous inputs at once, the `%history` magic command is very helpful.\n",
    "Here is how you can print the first four inputs:\n",
    "\n",
    "```ipython\n",
    "In [16]: %history -n 1-3\n",
    "   1: import math\n",
    "   2: math.sin(2)\n",
    "   3: math.cos(2)\n",
    "```\n",
    "\n",
    "As usual, you can type `%history?` for more information and a description of options available (see [Help and Documentation in IPython](01.01-Help-And-Documentation.ipynb) for details on the `?` functionality).\n",
    "Other useful magic commands are `%rerun`, which will re-execute some portion of the command history, and `%save`, which saves some set of the command history to a file)."
   ]
  }
 ],
 "metadata": {
  "anaconda-cloud": {},
  "jupytext": {
   "formats": "ipynb,md"
  },
  "kernelspec": {
   "display_name": "Python 3",
   "language": "python",
   "name": "python3"
  },
  "language_info": {
   "codemirror_mode": {
    "name": "ipython",
    "version": 3
   },
   "file_extension": ".py",
   "mimetype": "text/x-python",
   "name": "python",
   "nbconvert_exporter": "python",
   "pygments_lexer": "ipython3",
   "version": "3.9.2"
  }
 },
 "nbformat": 4,
 "nbformat_minor": 4
}