Cd Command In Ipython Vs. Spyder

I know that many of the working directory prompts that work in IPython also work in Spyder as long as they're prefaced by %. For example, pwd and ls work in IPython, but to run t

Solution 1:

When you run %foo, that command is run in a new shell instance running as its own process. When that shell exits, changes to its state (such as its working directory) are lost with it; they don't effect the parent Python process that spawned it.

This is the same as how running sh -c 'cd /' doesn't change your current working directory in shell. (Indeed, running a new process as sh -c "$some_command" is exactly how the standard-C library call system(some_command), and its Python equivalent os.system(some_command) works).