Magics

Magics are programs provided by stata_kernel that enhance the experience of working with Stata in Jupyter.

All magics are special commands that start with %. They must be the first word of the cell or selection, otherwise they won't be intercepted and will be sent to Stata.

For most of the magics listed, you can add --help to see a help menu in the kernel. For example,

In [1]: %locals --help
usage: %locals [-h] [-v] [REGEX [REGEX ...]]

positional arguments:
  REGEX          regex to match

optional arguments:
  -h, --help     show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose  Verbose output (print full contents of matched locals).

The magics that respond with richly formatted text, namely %browse and %help, will not work with Jupyter Console or Jupyter QtConsole, since they don't support displaying HTML.

%browse, %head, %tail

Interactively view your dataset

This can optionally be provided with a varlist, N, or if:

%browse [-h] [N] [varlist] [if]
%head [-h] [N] [varlist] [if]
%tail [-h] [N] [varlist] [if]

By default:

• %browse displays the first 200 rows
• %head displays the first 10 rows
• %tail displays the last 10 rows

If you're using Windows or macOS with Automation mode, you can also run browse (without the %) and it will open the usual Stata data explorer.

Atom
Jupyter Notebook

%delimit

Print the current delimiter

This takes no arguments; it prints the delimiter currently set: either cr or ;. If you want to change the delimiter, use #delimit ; or #delimit cr. The delimiter will remain set until changed.

In [1]: %delimit
The delimiter is currently: cr

In [2]: #delimit ;
delimiter now ;
In [3]: %delimit
The delimiter is currently: ;

In [4]: #delimit cr
delimiter now cr

%help

Display a help file in rich text

%help [-h] command_or_topic_name

Add the term you want to search for after %help:

In [1]: %help histogram

The terms in italics (Atom) or underlined (Jupyter Notebook) are links. Click on them to see another help menu.

Atom
Jupyter Notebook

%html, %latex

Display command output as HTML or LaTeX

This can be useful when creating regression tables with esttab, for example. The images below are run following

sysuse auto
eststo: qui regress price weight mpg
eststo: qui regress price weight mpg foreign

An HTML table will display correctly both inside JupyterLab and as a saved HTML file.

JupyterLab
Saved HTML file

A LaTeX table will not display correctly within JupyterLab (it only supports the math subset of LaTeX) but it will render correctly upon export to a PDF (which happens through LaTeX).

Saved PDF file
Saved HTML file

%locals, %globals

List local or global macros

%locals [-h] [-v] [REGEX [REGEX ...]]
%globals [-h] [-v] [REGEX [REGEX ...]]

These take two optional arguments:

1. a regular expression for filtering the locals or globals displayed
2. a --verbose flag

In [1]: %globals S_
(note: showing first line of global values; run with --verbose)

S_ADO:     BASE;SITE;.;PERSONAL;PLUS;OLDPLACE;`"/home/kyle/github/stata/sta
S_level:   95
S_CONSOLE: console
S_FLAVOR:  Intercooled
S_OS:      Unix
S_MACH:    PC (64-bit x86-64)

In [2]: %globals S_ --verbose
S_ADO:     BASE;SITE;.;PERSONAL;PLUS;OLDPLACE;`"/home/kyle/github/stata/sta
           > ta_kernel/stata_kernel/ado"'
S_level:   95
S_CONSOLE: console
S_FLAVOR:  Intercooled
S_OS:      Unix
S_MACH:    PC (64-bit x86-64)

%set

Set configuration value

Usage:

%set [-h] [--permanently] [--reset] key value

• key: Configuration key name. The full list of configuration options is shown on the Configuration page.
• value: Value to set.
• --permanently: Store settings permanently.
• --reset: Restore default settings.

As an example, you can change the graph settings like so:

%set graph_format svg --permanently
%set graph_scale 1
%set graph_width 500
%set graph_height 300

%show_gui, %hide_gui

Show/hide the Stata Graphical User Interface (GUI). Only works on Windows (and Mac if using automation execution mode)"

%status

Print information about:

• Stata kernel version
• Whether you're in Stata/Mata
• Current delimiter