Executing JShell commands from within notebook

We are evaluating the use of the IJava kernel as part of an introductory course on (Java) programming. It looks very promising, esp. because it nicely integrates with nbgrader. We wondered how one would execute JShell commands from within a notebook, like /vars? Via magics?

[padreati]

@mrcalvin A comment related with %open magic: there is already a %load magic which loads and executes a given notebook. I use this approach to set up a notebook for bootstrap my library and I suppose it is quite useful.

[mrcalvin]

Thanks for the informative reply (tool vs. API)! In fact, when cross-reading the doc on available jshell commands and the API doc, I think an immediately useful starting point would be introspection commands (as they map 1:1 to JShell methods):

• %vars: variables
• %types: types
• %methods: methods
• %imports: imports

I wondered whether a variant of %open would also be nice, to pick up snippets from a script relative to a given notebook (like a cross-notebook startup script)? This could be used to stage a certain, shared environment of methods and variables, for different students to start working from common grounds. Also, sth. like %save would be nice, to collect all evaluated snippets into a dump script (to maybe re-process them independently from the Jupyter notebook environment).