Paste a string as a variable, not as executable code snippet, into IPython

Question

I'm aware of the magic IPython %paste command, which is quite useful, if you have valid code to insert. Now I don't want to insert code, I just want to store some string from the copy buffer as a variable. Is there a simpler way to do that, except copying the string to some separate text editor and modifying it first?

Something like this would be nice, but none of them are working:

strvar = %paste
strvar = """%paste"""

P.S. The string is lengthy and contains special chars etc. so simple ctrl-c just creates garbage and error messages.

I know how %paste works. This was not the question, and I wonder if you read the question at all, before you downvoted it oO — Michael
– Michael, Commented Oct 8, 2012 at 19:15
If you open the triple quotes and then paste from the clipboard, there shouldn't be any error messages. — Lev Levitsky
– Lev Levitsky, Commented Oct 8, 2012 at 19:26
No, this just gives a "%paste" as a string, not the clipboard. — Michael
– Michael, Commented Oct 8, 2012 at 20:26
Open triple quotes and then using ctrl+v is another valid option, still %paste strvar is nicer, as it doesn't clutter your console with megabytes of buffer content. Using %paste strvar for a while now, I use quotes+ctrl+v only, when %paste strvar sometimes drops some weird parsing error about the content. — Michael
– Michael, Commented Feb 21, 2013 at 5:23

Daniel · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-09 07:14:51Z

32

%paste strvar

gives you a list of the lines from the copied text. You can do

strvar = '\n'.join(strvar)

to get the text in a single string.

answered Oct 9, 2012 at 7:14

Daniel

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1 Comment

Thomas K Over a year ago

It's actually a special list subclass - you can do strvar.n to get newline-joined text. Likewise strvar.s for space-separated.

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