Question

I wrote the following program in Python 2 to do Newton’s method computations for my math problem set, and while it works perfectly, for reasons unbeknownst to me, when I initially load it in ipython with %run -i NewtonsMethodMultivariate.py, the Python 3 division is not imported. I know this because after I load my Python program, entering x**(3/4) gives “1”. After manually importing the new division, then x**(3/4) remains x**(3/4), as expected. Why is this?

# coding: utf-8
from __future__ import division
from sympy import symbols, Matrix, zeros

x, y = symbols('x y')
X = Matrix([[x],[y]])
tol = 1e-3

def roots(h,a):
  def F(s):
    return h.subs({x: s[0,0], y: s[1,0]})
  def D(s):
    return h.jacobian(X).subs({x: s[0,0], y: s[1,0]})
  if F(a) == zeros((2,1)):
    return a
  else:
    while (F(a)).norm() > tol:
      a = a - ((D(a))**(-1))*F(a)
      print a.evalf(10)

I would use Python 3 to avoid this issue, but my Linux distribution only ships SymPy for Python 2. Thanks to the help anyone can provide.

Also, in case anyone was wondering, I haven’t yet generalized this script for nxn Jacobians, and only had to deal with 2×2 in my problem set. Additionally, I’m slicing the 2×2 zero matrix instead of using the command zeros(2,1) because SymPy 0.7.1, installed on my machine, complains that “zeros() takes exactly one argument”, though the wiki suggests otherwise. Maybe this command is only for the git version. (Thanks eryksun for correcting my notation, which fixed the issue with the zeros function.)

Answer 1

Both ipython -i command and run -i in ipython interpreter ignore from __future__ import division in print05.py script.

$ cat print05.py 
from __future__ import division
print(1/2)

In ipython console:

In [1]: print 1/2
0
In [2]: run -i print05.py
0.5
In [3]: division
Out[3]: _Feature((2, 2, 0, 'alpha', 2), (3, 0, 0, 'alpha', 0), 8192)
In [4]: print 1/2
0
In [5]: from __future__ import division
In [6]: print 1/2
0.5

execfile and import produce the same result:

>>> print 1/2
0
>>> execfile('print05.py')
0.5
>>> print 1/2
0
>>> from __future__ import division
>>> print 1/2
0.5

from __future__ import division should not have effect on the source code from different modules, otherwise it would break code in other modules that don’t expect its presence.

Here, from __future__ import division has effect:

$ python -i print05.py
0.5
>>> print 1/2
0.5
>>> division
_Feature((2, 2, 0, 'alpha', 2), (3, 0, 0, 'alpha', 0), 8192)

The module name in this case is __main__ both inside print05.py and in the prompt.

Here, the first print 1/2 executes in print05 module, the second one in __main__ module so it also works as expected:

$ python -im print05
0.5
>>> print 1/2
0

And here’s something wrong:

$ ipython -i print05.py
0.5
In [1]: division
Out[1]: _Feature((2, 2, 0, 'alpha', 2), (3, 0, 0, 'alpha', 0), 8192)
In [2]: print 1/2
0

The docs for __future__ say:

If an interpreter is started with the -i option, is passed a script
name to execute, and the script includes a future statement, it will
be in effect in the interactive session started after the script is
executed.

So It might be a bug in ipython if its -i option tries to emulate the same python option.