Why does pip need an exclamation point to use in iPython?

Question

Just a quick example, typing pip list doesn't work but !pip list does. Is there some syntax regarding the exclamation point and using modules in the ipython shell?

Answer 1

This is actually not specific to pip, but really any shell command from the iPython notebook. You'll notice other shell commands also work (from the docs):

In[1]: !pwd
/User/home/

Change directory:

In[1]: !cd /var/etc

This is simply shorthand that the good folks at Jupyter have included. See Shell Assignment in the docs for more of an explanation.