IPython: redirecting output of a Python script to a file (like bash >)

Question

I have a Python script that I want to run in IPython. I want to redirect (write) the output to a file, similar to:

python my_script.py > my_output.txt
         


        

Answer 1

While this an old question, I found this and the answers as I was facing a similar problem.

The solution I found after sifting through IPython Cell magics documentation is actually fairly simple. At the most basic the solution is to assign the output of the command to a variable.

This simple two-cell example shows how to do that. In the first Notebook cell we define the Python script with some output to stdout making use of the %%writefile cell magic.

%%writefile output.py
print("This is the output that is supposed to go to a file")

Then we run that script like it was run from a shell using the ! operator.

output = !python output.py
print(output)
>>> ['This is the output that is supposed to go to a file']

Then you can easily make use of the %store magic to persist the output.

%store output > output.log

Notice however that the output of the command is persisted as a list of lines. You might want to call "\n".join(output) prior storing the output.