On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 07:32:44 -0400, Bart Willems wrote:
> gtb wrote:
>> appear at the end of many examples I see. Is this to cause a .class
>> file to be generated?
> This might be obvious, but no one else mentioned it: the Python
> interpreter cannot execute code that it hasn't compiled yet, which is
> why the "if __name__ ..." code is always at the end of the module - to
> guarantee that the entire file is scanned first.
Nonsense.
Here's my "test.py":
%%%%%
x = 42
if __name__ == "__main__":
print "x has value", x
x = 23
print "now x has value", x
%%%%%
It works just as you would expect:
$ python test.py
x has value 42
now x has value 23
And when you import it:
>>> import test
now x has value 42
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, magic about the idiom
if __name__ == "__main__". It is just an if block, like any other if
block. If you still aren't convinced, try this one:
%%%%%
x = 42
if __name__ == "__main__":
print "x has value", x
print "y has value", y
y = 43
%%%%%
--
Steven D'Aprano
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
