[IPython-user] Some starting-out IPython questions

[Dick Moores]

It seems I'm at a disadvantage as a Windows (Win XP Pro) user with
IPython. Some of the features just don't work as described, although
undoubtedly they do on Linux, etc.

To my current puzzlements/questions:

1. If I were using Linux, I suppose my pager would be 'less'. But I'm
not, and it's not. But what is it? And first of all, I want to know
how to go back up a screen or two. To possibly identify the pager, at
the bottom of each screen it says, "---Return to continue, q to
quit---".  Is that 'more'? If so, can I get a version of 'less' that
my IPython could use?

2. I see that timeit can be used this way:
In [22]: timeit x = 2; x**x
10000000 loops, best of 3: 201 ns per loop

But how to use it with, say,

for x in range(1000):
   x**x

3. What does
 ipython  -quick
do?

I found this in my C:\Documents and Settings\Riley\_ipython\ipythonrc.ini:

# quick 1 -> same as ipython -quick
quick 1

I changed it to 0 to see if I could see the difference. I
couldn't--possibly because I didn't know what to look for. So, what
does    ipython -quick   do?

4. Although I have the environment variable EDITOR set to Textpad 5,
ed continues to open IDLE as the editor.
In [16]: env
Out[16]:
...
 'EDITOR': "C:\\Program Files\\TextPad 5"
...

How come?


Thanks,

Dick Moores