Cannot import pexpect

Not sure where this is coming from. I’m creating a new conda env and doing conda install jupyter. Following this I can’t use anything because ipython won’t work. pexpect is definitely installed but ipython can’t find it:

(jupyter)see4-206:~/code/notedown (master *=)$ python
Python 2.7.10 |Continuum Analytics, Inc.| (default, Sep 15 2015, 14:50:01)
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-1)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Anaconda is brought to you by Continuum Analytics.
Please check out: http://continuum.io/thanks and https://anaconda.org
>>> import IPython
/nfs/see-fs-02_users/eeaol/src/anaconda/envs/jupyter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/config.py:13: ShimWarning: The `IPython.config` package has been deprecated. You should import from traitlets.config instead.
  "You should import from traitlets.config instead.", ShimWarning)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/nfs/see-fs-02_users/eeaol/src/anaconda/envs/jupyter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/__init__.py", line 48, in <module>
    from .core.application import Application
  File "/nfs/see-fs-02_users/eeaol/src/anaconda/envs/jupyter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/application.py", line 24, in <module>
    from IPython.core import release, crashhandler
  File "/nfs/see-fs-02_users/eeaol/src/anaconda/envs/jupyter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/crashhandler.py", line 28, in <module>
    from IPython.core import ultratb
  File "/nfs/see-fs-02_users/eeaol/src/anaconda/envs/jupyter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/ultratb.py", line 116, in <module>
    from IPython.utils import path as util_path
  File "/nfs/see-fs-02_users/eeaol/src/anaconda/envs/jupyter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/utils/path.py", line 21, in <module>
    from IPython.utils.process import system
  File "/nfs/see-fs-02_users/eeaol/src/anaconda/envs/jupyter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/utils/process.py", line 28, in <module>
    from ._process_posix import _find_cmd, system, getoutput, arg_split, check_pid
  File "/nfs/see-fs-02_users/eeaol/src/anaconda/envs/jupyter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/utils/_process_posix.py", line 24, in <module>
    from IPython.external import pexpect
ImportError: cannot import name pexpect
>>> import pexpect
>>> pexpect.__file__
'/nfs/see-fs-02_users/eeaol/src/anaconda/envs/jupyter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pexpect/__init__.pyc'
>>>

This isn’t a problem if I pip install jupyter - in that case I have a jsonschema problem that can be upgraded out of.

[cardosan]

Had exactly the same issue in deleting an environment and recreating another one with same name. I solved the prob cleaning (conda clean -p -t -i -y) before creating the new enviro

[aaren]

Problem fixed (for me at least).

I noticed that my ipython installs were coming from a cache rather than a new download. I ‘fixed’ the error by physically deleting all ipython packages from anaconda/pkgs and then reinstalling. There is probably a better way of fixing it (possibly with conda clean) but I can’t test now because the bad environment is gone.

I’ve no idea how it went bad in the first place, but this is a fairly old anaconda install.