is defined with the same name as the magic function in question this feature is called automagic and can be enabled or disabled using %automagic since ipython' documentation is easily accessible from within the systemi encourage you to explore all of the special commands available by typing %quickref or %magic will highlight few more of the most critical ones for being productive in interactive computing and python development in ipython table - frequently-used ipython magic commands command description %quickref display the ipython quick reference card %magic display detailed documentation for all of the available magic commands %debug enter the interactive debugger at the bottom of the last exception traceback %hist print command input (and optionally outputhistory %pdb automatically enter debugger after any exception %paste execute pre-formatted python code from clipboard %cpaste open special prompt for manually pasting python code to be executed %reset delete all variables names defined in interactive namespace %page object pretty print the object and display it through pager %run script py run python script inside ipython %prun statement execute statement with cprofile and report the profiler output %time statement report the execution time of single statement %timeit statement run statement multiple times to compute an emsemble average execution time useful for timing code with very short execution time %who%who_ls%whos display variables defined in interactive namespacewith varying levels of information verbosity %xdel variable delete variable and attempt to clear any references to the object in the ipython internals qt-based rich gui console the ipython team has developed qt framework-based gui consoledesigned to wed the features of the terminal-only applications with the features provided by rich text widgetlike embedded imagesmultiline editingand syntax highlighting if you have either pyqt or pyside installedthe application can be launched with inline plotting by running this on the command lineipython qtconsole --pylab=inline the qt console can launch multiple ipython processes in tabsenabling you to switch between tasks it can also share process with the ipython html notebook applicationwhich 'll highlight later ipython basics www it-ebooks info