IPython shell assignment (the !
operator) evaluates a command using the local shell (e.g., bash
) and returns a string list (IPython.utils.text.SList
). An SList
is a list-like object containing "chunks" of stdout and stderr, properties for accessing those chunks in different forms, and convenience methods for operating on them.

The SList.ipynb
notebook below uses SList
properties to access the output of a shell command as a list-like of strings, a newline-separated string, a space-separated string, and a list of pathlib.Path
objects. The notebook then uses the SList.fields()
and SList.grep()
methods to extract columns from and search command output.