Changing directory in Google colab breaking out of the python interpreter

Question

So I m trying to git clone and cd into that directory using Google collab  - but I cant cd into it  What am I doing wrong    rm -rf SwitchFrequencyAnalysis  amp  amp  git clone https   github com ACECentre SwitchFrequencyAnalysis git  cd SwitchFrequencyAnalysis  ls datalab   SwitchFrequencyAnalysis   You would expect it to output the directory contents of SwitchFrequencyAnalysis - but instead its the root  I m feeling I m missing something obvious - Is it something to do with being within the python interpreter   where is the documentation    Demo here

User · Answer

If you want to use the cd or ls functions , you need proper identifiers before the function names ( % and ! respectively) use %cd and !ls to navigate

.

!ls    # to find the directory you're in ,
%cd ./samplefolder  #if you wanna go into a folder (say samplefolder)

or if you wanna go out of the current folder

%cd ../

and then navigate to the required folder/file accordingly

User · Answer

Use os chdir  Here s a full example  https   colab research google com notebook fileId 1CSPBdmY0TxU038aKscL8YJ3ELgCiGGju  Compactly    mkdir abc  echo  file   gt  abc 123 txt  import os os chdir  abc      Now the directory  abc  is the current working directory    and will show 123 txt   ls

User · Answer

As others have pointed out  the cd command needs to start with a percentage sign    cd SwitchFrequencyAnalysis   Difference between   and    Google Colab seems to inherit these syntaxes from Jupyter  which inherits them from IPython   Jake VanderPlas explains this IPython behaviour here  You can see the excerpt below      If you play with IPython s shell commands for a while  you might   notice that you cannot use  cd to navigate the filesystem   In  11    pwd   home jake projects myproject  In  12    cd     In  13    pwd   home jake projects myproject        The reason is that   shell commands in the notebook are executed in a temporary subshell    If you d like to change the working directory in a more enduring way    you can use the  cd magic command   In  14    cd     home jake projects    Another way to look at this  you need   because changing directory is relevant to the environment of the current notebook but not to the entire server runtime    In general  use   if the command is one that s okay to run in a separate shell  Use   if the command needs to be run on the specific notebook

User · Answer

pwd import os os chdir   content drive My Drive Colab Notebooks Data    pwd   view this answer for detailed explaination https   stackoverflow com a 61636734 11535267

User · Answer

use   cd SwitchFrequencyAnalysis   to change the current working directory for the notebook environment  and not just the subshell that runs your   command    you can confirm it worked with the pwd command like this    pwd   further information about jupyter   ipython magics  http   ipython readthedocs io en stable interactive magics html magic-cd

[google-colaboratory] Changing directory in Google colab (breaking out of the python interpreter)

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