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What does In [*] at the upper left-hand of the cell mean when running a Jupyter notebook?

I know that when the cell in Jupyter notebook has not been run, it shows as In[ ], after running the cell, it shows as In[num].

What about In [*], does it mean that this cell is running now?

screenshot

Dan Dascalescu
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Haojia
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    it means: `currently evaluating` – cel Jan 19 '17 at 18:58
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    Possible duplicate of [What does In \[\*\] in IPython Notebook mean and how to turn it off?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30421373/what-does-in-in-ipython-notebook-mean-and-how-to-turn-it-off) – Mike Müller Jan 19 '17 at 19:13
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    Yes, the kernel is busy. If this persist, you can [turn if off](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30421373/what-does-in-in-ipython-notebook-mean-and-how-to-turn-it-off?rq=1). – Mike Müller Jan 19 '17 at 19:15
  • Does this answer your question? [Jupyter notebook not running code. Stuck on In \[\*\]](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46383177/jupyter-notebook-not-running-code-stuck-on-in) – Tomerikoo Feb 13 '23 at 16:03

4 Answers4

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This means that your kernel is busy. If you want to interrupt/stop the execution, go to the menu Kernel and click Interrupt.If it doesn't work, click Restart. You need to go in a new cell and press Shift + Enter to see if it worked.

awakened_iota
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4

When a cell is displayed as "busy" with an asterisk, it can mean one of several things:

  • The cell is currently executing.
  • An "execute" command was sent to the cell, but another cell is currently executing. The cell will execute when its turn comes.
  • The kernel was interrupted / restarted while the cell was executing, it is currently not executing.
Dan Dascalescu
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Arpit Sisodia
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-1

it would mean that either your code timed out or ran out of memory, Check for infinite loops or memory leaks.

Devi Krishna
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When a cell is displayed with an asterisk it means it's busy. It might mean that: 1) The cell is now executing; 2)or it will execute when it's turn arrives. 3)or it is not executing because the kernel was restarted or interrupted.

My recommendation is that you save the file and restart the kernell in preferrence without running everything, but if you are sure everything can run without problems just do it and it will be faster for you.

GSPorto
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