THE Disappearing Previous Result when overwriting a cell

[alanedelman]

In IPython, if you overwrite a cell, the moment you hit enter, the previous
result disappears.
There is a lot to be said for waiting until the computation completes before overwriting result.
This, for example, is the behavior seen in Mathematica's notebook.

This is useful for long computations while you want to examine the previous result while you are waiting, and also in debugging situations.

[ellisonbg]

Do you mean that the is cleared when the user presses ?+enter to run the cell? I think the current behavior does make sense most of the time, but let's see what everyone thinks.

[alanedelman]

That's what I mean. We can see if other people prefer the instant disappearing act, but
I for one do not.

[Carreau]

For me editting a cell an pressing shift enter mean that I made a mistake so any result that could be waiting is in any case not interesting.

I can understand the need to re-execute with many parameters, but then where do you stop ? I can in a few second execute a cell with ten different parameter ? What should happend? Show everything ? only the last ? Show something until the next output arrives ?

I'm trying to understand your use case, and what you would want instead of what we have, but I don't see any alternative that would not be confusing, or annoying half of the time.

[ahmadia]

How hard of a compromise would it be to have it available as a Javascript
plugin for those who want it?

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 1:51 PM, Matthias Bussonnier <
notifications@github.com> wrote:

For me editting a cell an pressing shift enter mean that I made a mistake
so any result that could be waiting is in any case not interesting.

I can understand the need to re-execute with many parameters, but then
where do you stop ? I can in a few second execute a cell with ten different
parameter ? What should happend? Show everything ? only the last ? Show
something until the next output arrives ?

I'm trying to understand your use case, and what you would want instead of
what we have, but I don't see any alternative that would not be confusing,
or annoying half of the time.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/4991#issuecomment-33908458
.

[Carreau]

How hard of a compromise would it be to have it available as a Javascript
plugin for those who want it?

Not super easy. But doable. Though it would be smth statefull so brittle.