IPython is an interactive shell

Shell (computing)

A shell is a piece of software that provides an interface for users of an operating system which provides access to the services of a kernel. However, the term is also applied very loosely to applications and may include any software that is "built around" a particular component, such as web...

 for the Python programming language

Python (programming language)

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

 that offers enhanced introspection, additional shell syntax, tab completion and rich history.

Other features

IPython allows non-blocking interaction with Tkinter

Tkinter

Tkinter is a Python binding to the Tk GUI toolkit. It is the standard Python interface to the Tk GUI toolkit and is Python's de-facto standard GUI, and is included with the standard Windows install of Python....

, GTK, Qt

Qt (toolkit)

Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers...

 and wxWidgets

WxWidgets

wxWidgets is a widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with minimal or no code changes...

 (the standard Python shell only allows interaction with Tkinter

Tkinter

Tkinter is a Python binding to the Tk GUI toolkit. It is the standard Python interface to the Tk GUI toolkit and is Python's de-facto standard GUI, and is included with the standard Windows install of Python....

). IPython can interactively manage parallel computing clusters using asynchronous status callbacks and/or MPI

Message Passing Interface

Message Passing Interface is a standardized and portable message-passing system designed by a group of researchers from academia and industry to function on a wide variety of parallel computers...

. IPython can also be used as a system shell replacement. Its default behavior is largely familiar to Unix shell

Unix shell

A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional user interface for the Unix operating system and for Unix-like systems...

s, but it allows customization and the flexibility of executing code in a live Python environment.

In the media

IPython has been mentioned in the popular computing press, and it has a presence at scientific conferences. For scientific and engineering work, it is often presented as a companion tool to Matplotlib

Matplotlib

matplotlib is a plotting library for the Python programming language and its NumPy numerical mathematics extension. It provides an object-oriented API which allows plots to be embedded into applications using generic GUI toolkits, like wxPython, Qt, or GTK...

.

External links

• IPython homepage
• IPython Cookbook
• Several presentations of IPython at Python and scientific conferences are listed at the Scientific Python website.
• IPython introduction videos at showmedo
  Showmedo
  ShowMeDo is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share Video tutorials.Most of the screencasts focus on themes related to computer programming languages and Open Source software, especially Python....
  
  
• Python for Scientific and Large Scale Computing — a set of video tutorials from Ohio Supercomputer Center on Python, including IPython and its parallel computing capabilities.