ipython notebook clear cell output in code

aha picture aha · Jul 18, 2014 · Viewed 165.8k times · Source

In a iPython notebook, I have a while loop that listens to a Serial port and print the received data in real time.

What I want to achieve to only show the latest received data (i.e only one line showing the most recent data. no scrolling in the cell output area)

What I need(i think) is to clear the old cell output when I receives new data, and then prints the new data. I am wondering how can I clear old data programmatically ?

Answer

cel picture cel · Jul 18, 2014

You can use IPython.display.clear_output to clear the output of a cell.

from IPython.display import clear_output

for i in range(10):
    clear_output(wait=True)
    print("Hello World!")

At the end of this loop you will only see one Hello World!.

Without a code example it's not easy to give you working code. Probably buffering the latest n events is a good strategy. Whenever the buffer changes you can clear the cell's output and print the buffer again.