On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:09:58 +0100, Roald de Vries wrote: > Dear all, > > Is it possible for a Python script to detect whether it is running > interactively? It can be useful for e.g. defining functions that are > only useful in interactive mode.
Check __name__. It's set to '__main__' when running as a (non- interactive) script, and to the name of the module when imported. [st...@sylar ~]$ cat interactive.py print __name__ [st...@sylar ~]$ python interactive.py __main__ [st...@sylar ~]$ python Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Nov 6 2007, 16:54:01) [GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-27)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> >>> import interactive interactive >>> The only complications are that it doesn't work well with the -i command line switch (it still reports that __name__ == '__main__'), and if you start an interactive session __name__ is also set to '__main__'. Sadly, sys.argv doesn't report the switches used, but in Python 2.6 and better you can look at sys.flags to see if the -i switch is being used. http://docs.python.org/library/sys.html#sys.flags -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
