Ever wished that you could use the head or tail command (available on Linux and Mac OS X) in iPython or the Jupyter notebook when using WIndows?
Here's how I implemented a head and tail command for iPython and Jupyter on Windows. It depends on the following Powershell 3.0 (Windows 8 and higher) commands :
Get-Content filename -Head n Get-Content filename -Tail n
SInce we will be using iPython shell access, we have to run it from DOS as follows :
powershell -command "& {Get-Content filename -Head 10}" powershell -command "& {Get-Content filename -Tail 10}"
Create the aliases head and tail either in iPython or Jupyter :
%alias head powershell -command "& {Get-Content %s -Head 10}" %alias tail powershell -command "& {Get-Content %s -Tail 10}"
Usage : You should now be able to the commands like this :
%head filename
to show the first 10 lines of filename.
%tail filename
to show the last 10 lines of filename.
To persist the aliases across sessions, store them with the %store magic command :
%store head %store tail
When you start a new iPython/Jupyter session you need to restore the stored variables with
% store -r
To automatically restore stored variables at startup, add this line to your ipython_config.py file :
c.StoreMagics.autorestore = True
If you do not have a config file yet, create one with the command
ipython create profile
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