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pip3 is an updated version of pip which is used basically for python 3+. The system will use one of your Python versions depending on what exactly is first in the system PATH variable. When you run PIP3, you can be sure that the module will be installed in Python 3.
To install it on Python3, Pip3 should be use to install packages. Note: It is not require that pip installs in python 2.7; if python2 is missing, pip will install in python3. The above statement was if you have both versions of python installed.
Python 3.4+ in most operating systems includes pip3 by default. If your python version is less than 3.4, then you should upgrade your Python version which will automatically install pip3.
Your pip is a soft link to the same executable file path with pip3.
you can use the commands below to check where your pip and pip3 real paths are:
$ ls -l `which pip`
$ ls -l `which pip3`
You may also use the commands below to know more details:
$ pip show pip
$ pip3 show pip
When we install different versions of python, we may create such soft links to
It is the same situation with python, python2, python3
More information below if you're interested in how it happens in different cases:
If you had python 2.x and then installed python3, your pip will be pointing to pip3.
you can verify that by typing pip --version which would be the same as pip3 --version.
On your system you have now pip, pip2 and pip3.
If you want you can change pip to point to pip2 instead of pip3.
When you install python3, pip3 gets installed. And if you don't have another python installation(like python2.7) then a link is created which points pip to pip3.
So pip is a link to to pip3 if there is no other version of python installed(other than python3).
pip generally points to the first installation.
By illustration:
pip --version
pip 19.0.3 from /usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip (python 3.7)
pip3 --version
pip 19.0.3 from /usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip (python 3.7)
python --version
Python 3.7.3
which python
/usr/bin/python
ls -l '/usr/bin/python'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Mar 26 14:43 /usr/bin/python -> python3
which python3
/usr/bin/python3
ls -l /usr/bin/python3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Mar 26 14:43 /usr/bin/python3 -> python3.7
ls -l /usr/bin/python3.7
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 14120 Mar 26 14:43 /usr/bin/python3.7
Thus, my in my default system python (Python 3.7.3), pip is pip3.
This is a tricky subject. In the end, if you invoke pip it will invoke either pip2 or pip3, depending on how you set your system up.
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