[IPython-user] Feature suggestion: %remember

[Fernando Perez]

Ville Vainio wrote:
> Here's an idea that is rather easy to implement: a new magic called
> %remember. It would store the name & value of the specified variable
> to the same persistent_data structure as bookmarks, and all the values
> in that structure would be loaded to the appropriate variables at
> session startup.

The problem is that pickle is notoriously finicky, and there are many 
innocuous-looking things in python which can NOT be pickled, so this function 
can fail at any time.

One could certainly write an implementation which tiptoes through the list of 
things to remember, tries to pickle each and reports upon exit which ones 
failed to write.  But I'm not sure how useful such an unreliable tool would 
be, and with ipython I always resist putting in the core something which is 
too easy to break in everyday use.

On the other hand, this is precisely the kind of thing that you could keep in 
your personal config: since you know its limitations, you can use it well. 
And I'd be happy to keep a collection of such 'personal toys' in the public 
ipython wiki, since they would most likely only be used by more experienced 
users, and there would be a message indicating their limitations.

So if you write it for your own purposes, by all means send it and I'll put it 
up on the wiki.  But until you can convince me that we can have this in the 
core and be _reliable_, I'm afraid I'll balk at it.

Cheers,

f

ps - implementation tips: use shelve, atexit, and in your magic, store the 
list of names to be rememberd as a hidden var in the user namespace:

self.shell.user_ns['__magic_remember'] = ....

With these, the actual implementation should be very, very easy (if not robust 
due to the problems listed above).