Question :
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 #1:
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.
Answer #2:
You can use the IPython.display.clear_output to clear the output as mentioned in cel’s answer. I would add that for me the best solution was to use this combination of parameters to print without any “shakiness” of the notebook:
from IPython.display import clear_output
for i in range(10):
clear_output(wait=True)
print(i, flush=True)
Answer #3:
And in case you come here, like I did, looking to do the same thing for plots in a Julia notebook in Jupyter, using Plots, you can use:
IJulia.clear_output(true)
so for a kind of animated plot of multiple runs
if nrun==1
display(plot(x,y)) # first plot
else
IJulia.clear_output(true) # clear the window (as above)
display(plot!(x,y)) # plot! overlays the plot
end
Without the clear_output call, all plots appear separately.
