[IPython-dev] storing variables *in* the notebook

Antonino Ingargiola tritemio at gmail.com
Thu Jan 26 12:20:12 EST 2017


Hi Zoltan,

just a simple comment.

If the data is not big, why not copying it verbatim in a code cell? Even in
a very long single line if you do not wish to clobber the visual aspect.
That way the notebook would be self-contained.

My 2-cents.
Antonio

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 11:45 PM, Zoltán Vörös <zvoros at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Thomas,
>
>
> Thanks for the comments! Here are mine.
>
>
> On 01/25/2017 11:20 PM, Thomas Kluyver wrote:
>
>> On 25 January 2017 at 21:33, Zoltán Vörös <zvoros at gmail.com <mailto:
>> zvoros at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Now, the standard answer to this problem is the %store magic, but
>>     that has at least two problems (one is actually more like a
>>     feature). First, as far as I understand, it saves the variable
>>     into a separate file, therefore, the notebook itself is not
>>     "portable" anymore: if I want to give it to someone, or use it on
>>     another computer, then I need the extra file, but then I could
>>     just save the variable in a file in the first place.
>>
>>
>> In many cases, we think that the unit of sharing should be a directory
>> containing notebooks and associated data files, rather than a notebook
>> itself. Storing and retrieving data in a notebook would require breaking
>> the abstraction that the code inside a notebook doesn't know about the
>> document it's part of.
>>
>
> But by the same token, by resorting to the %store magic, the code inside
> the notebook is linked to something on the file system, in fact,
> surreptitiously in a way. I am afraid, I don't quite see, why and how
> %store is different in this respect.
>
> To me, one of the main appeals of the notebook is that one can write a
> report/log (by this I mean create figures, do data analysis/simulation and
> add context, explanation etc.) in a single document, portably, and without
> clobbering the file system. I believe, the use case I mentioned earlier is
> a logical extension of this concept.
>
> The over-arching theme of the whole ipython project is that data,
> analysis, presentation and narrative should not be separated. Metadata are
> routinely attached to markdown cells, so why could not be done the same for
> the notebook as well?
>
> I understand that you do not want people to store GBs of data in the
> notebook, but that was not the intent of the original question.
>
>
>
>> ActivePapers is a different take on connecting code and data which does
>> package them in a single file; I believe it has some support for using a
>> Jupyter notebook as part of an ActivePaper:
>> https://github.com/khinsen/activepapers-python
>>
>
> Thanks for the pointer, I will check it out!
>
>
> Zoltán
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