One of Python’s most useful features is its interactive
interpreter. This system allows very fast testing of ideas
without the overhead of creating test files as is typical in
most programming languages. However, the interpreter supplied
with the standard Python distribution is somewhat limited for
extended interactive use. The goal of IPython is to create a
comprehensive environment for interactive and exploratory
computing. To support this goal, IPython has two main
components: - An enhanced interactive Python shell. - An
architecture for interactive parallel computing. All of IPython
is open source (released under the revised BSD license).
Interactive parallel computing Increasingly, parallel computer
hardware, such as multicore CPUs, clusters and supercomputers,
is becoming ubiquitous. Over the last 3 years, we have developed
an architecture within IPython that allows such hardware to be
used quickly and easily from Python. Moreover, this architecture
is designed to support interactive and collaborative p