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Waylon Walker
Waylon Walker

Posted on • Originally published at waylonwalker.com

IPython q to exit

So many terminal applications bind q to exit, even the python debugger, its muscle memory for me. But to exit ipython I have to type out exit<ENTER>. This is fine, but since q is muscle memory for me I get this error a few times per day.

╭─────────────────────────────── Traceback (most recent call last) ────────────────────────────────╮
│ <ipython-input-1-2b66fd261ee5>:1 in <module>                                                     │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
NameError: name 'q' is not defined
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After digging way too deep into how IPython implements its ExitAutoCall I realized there was a very simple solution here. IPython automatically imports all the scripts you put in your profile directory, all I needed was to create ~/.ipython/profile_default/startup/q.py with the following.

q = exit
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It was that simple. This is not a game changer by any means, but I will now see one less error in my workflow. I just press q<Enter> and I am out, without error.

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