Hi Reader,

Wherever you are in the world today, I wish you safety, health, and happiness! 💗

🔗 Link of the week

​Unofficial Python glossary​

This guide was written by my pal Trey Hunner, and it’s the single best source I’ve found for clear explanations of Python terms and concepts. I use it to learn new things and to double-check that my teaching materials are correct!

👉 Tip #29: Faster coding using magic commands

Back in tip 24, I introduced you to IPython magic commands, which are special commands that you can use in Jupyter.

You learned about line magics, which start with % and apply to one line of code:

• %lsmagic
• %quickref
• %time
• %timeit
• %who
• %whos
• %history
• %pastebin

You also learned about cell magics, which start with %% and apply to an entire cell:

• %%time
• %%timeit

Today, I’m going to introduce you to 4 more magic commands that are great for saving, displaying, and running code!

Save & reuse Python code without leaving Jupyter

Let’s pretend that you’re working in a large Jupyter notebook and you come up with a brilliant new function:

You want to save this function to reuse in other notebooks. Without leaving Jupyter, you use the %%writefile cell magic to save just this function to another Python script:

And now your function is preserved in a separate file!

Weeks pass, and you’re working in a new notebook that could benefit from this function. You want to remind yourself what’s in the function, so you output the file contents using the %pycat line magic:

If it needed some edits, you could use the %load line magic:

Running that command loads the contents of the file into the cell (but does not run it) so that you can make those edits:

But in this case, the function is perfect as-is. Thus you use the %run line magic to run the existing file:

Our function is now available for use in this new notebook:

Key takeaway: With this workflow, you can save and reuse code blocks without ever leaving the Jupyter environment!

You can also %run an entire notebook

By the way, %run even works with notebooks! For example, if you had this notebook called drinks.ipynb:

You could run the entire notebook from another notebook, and just see its output:

Key takeaway: You can build a series of smaller notebooks, and then run them all from a “master” notebook that only displays the output (and hides the underlying code).

If you enjoyed this week’s tip, please forward it to a friend! Takes only a few seconds, and it really helps me reach more people! 🙏

See you next Tuesday!

- Kevin

P.S. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?​

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