[IPython-dev] Namespace pollution and a kernel panel

[Fernando Perez]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 1:31 PM, Bob McElrath <bob+ipython at mcelrath.org> wrote:
> This is because I ran ipython --pylab, but it highlights a bigger problem: how
> does the user know which symbols are defined?

This is slightly orthogonal to the rest of the discussion, but you can
configure ipython to *not* do 'from numpy import *' when --pylab is
given, and to only provide the names 'numpy, matplotlib, pyplot, np,
plt' in your namespace and nothing else.  That gives you the plotting
support (including backend integration and gui/inline support),
without any further pollution of the namespace.