This post provides a short intro on picking up useful Jupyter hacks. We begin with a short overview of the most essential Jupyter shortcuts and skills. If you have not read the introduction to Jupyter you should do that immediately, see here.
Keyboard short cuts
Editing and executing cells
- enter edit mode: click inside the cell or press
ENTR - exit edit mode: click outside cell or press
ESC. - executing code within a cell is
SHFT+ENTRorCTRL+ENTR(not the same!)
Adding removing cells (command mode only)
- delete a cell:
d,d(pressdtwice) - add cell:
aabove,bbelow
Converting between markdown and code (command mode only)
- as markdown:
m - as code:
y
Cutting, copying and pasting cells (command mode only).
- cut cell(s):
x - copy cell(s):
c - paste cell(s):
v
Tip: you can select multiple cells at once by holding shift and using mouse / arrow keys.
See all Jupyter keyboard shortcuts in menu (top): Help > Keyboard Shortcuts, or press H in command mode.
Other tips
Autocompletion
Within Jupyter the TAB command will autocomplete your code. This can also be used to see which methods are available for a given object.
Plotting
Using the syntax %matplotlib inline allows you to make figures within Jupyter notebook.
Function description
Execute a cell with ?fct will give you information about the function fct. Note this command also work on objects’ methods.
Another way of showing a function’s description
Inside a function you can view the function’s docstring by pressing SHIFT + TAB (try writing “sum(” and then pressing SHIFT + TAB). Mac users see Help > Keyboard Shortcuts.
Further resources
DataCamp has some excellent resources for picking up additional Jupyter skills. Their cheatsheet, available here, is excellent to print out and have is a coding aid. For a comprehensive overview of Jupyter to check out the official documentation, see here.
If you have other relevant material that you wish to share, make a pull request in our course page’s GitHub repo.