Example
Magics whose name begins with just one % take as argument the rest of the line and are called line magics. Magics that begin with a double percent sign %% take a multi-line argument and are called cell magics.
A commonly used magic is %timeit, a wrapper around the Python's timeit.timeit function, for measuring the execution time of a piece of code.
In [35]: ra = [random.randint(0,1000) for r in range(1000)]
In [35]: %timeit sorted(ra)
1000 loops, best of 3: 507 µs per loop
An example of cell magic is %%bash (equivalent to %%script bash) for running the input as bash code
In [49]: %%bash
...: i=3
...: while [ $i -ge 0 ]
...: do
...: echo $i
...: i=$(($i-1))
...: done
...:
3
2
1
0
Note that the end of a cell is marked by an empty line.
To view all built-in magics use %lsmagic
In [51]: %lsmagic
Out[51]:
Available line magics:
%alias %alias_magic %autocall %autoindent %automagic %bookmark %cd %cls
%colors %config %copy %cpaste %ddir %debug %dhist %dirs %doctest_mode
%echo %ed %edit %env %gui %hist %history %killbgscripts %ldir %load
%load_ext %loadpy %logoff %logon %logstart %logstate %logstop %ls %lsmagic
%macro %magic %matplotlib %mkdir %notebook %page %paste %pastebin %pdb
%pdef %pdoc %pfile %pinfo %pinfo2 %popd %pprint %precision %profile
%prun %psearch %psource %pushd %pwd %pycat %pylab %quickref %recall
%rehashx %reload_ext %ren %rep %rerun %reset %reset_selective %rmdir %run
%save %sc %set_env %store %sx %system %tb %time %timeit %unalias
%unload_ext %who %who_ls %whos %xdel %xmode
Available cell magics:
%%! %%HTML %%SVG %%bash %%capture %%cmd %%debug %%file %%html
%%javascript %%js %%latex %%perl %%prun %%pypy %%python %%python2 %%python3
%%ruby %%script %%sh %%svg %%sx %%system %%time %%timeit %%writefile
Automagic is ON, % prefix IS NOT needed for line magics.
Note that by default 'automagic' is on, and therefore line magics can be called without % prefix (but cell functions still need a %% prefix).
