How to make Ipython output a list without line bre

Question

The IPython console prints a list of elements with line breaks so that each element is displayed in its own line. This is usually a feature, but in my case it is a bug: I need to copy and paste long lists, so I need a compact representation. How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

You can use %pprint command to turn on/off pprint feature:

In [1]: range(24)
Out[1]:
[0,
 1,
 2,
 ...
 21,
 22,
 23]

In [2]: %pprint
Pretty printing has been turned OFF

In [3]: range(24)
Out[3]: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23]

If you want to turn off pprint permanently, make a profile, and add c.PlainTextFormatter.pprint = False to the profile file.

Linux example:

$ ipython profile create
[ProfileCreate] Generating default config file: '.../ipython_config.py'
[ProfileCreate] Generating default config file: u'..../ipython_notebook_config.py'
$ echo 'c.PlainTextFormatter.pprint = False' >> ~/.ipython/profile_default/ipython_config.py

Answer 2

An alternative to turning off pretty printing entirely is to increase the max_width trait for the PlainTextFormatter.

Add the following to ipython_config.py (find it by ipython locate profile):

c.PlainTextFormatter.max_width = 120

which will allow the pretty printer to use less vertical space by allowing lines to extend out to 120 characters rather than the default of 79.

Answer 3

Start ipython with --no-pprint option.

$ ipython --no-pprint
...
IPython 0.13.2 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
...
In [1]: lis = ['a'*10]*10

In [2]: lis
Out[2]: ['aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa']

Another options is to start ipython with --classic option, in that pprint is already disabled:

$ ipython --classic
...
IPython 0.13.2 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
...
>>> lis = ['a'*10]*10
>>> lis
['aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'aaaaaaaaaa']