[Python-Dev] User's complaints

[Ka-Ping Yee]

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006, Wolfgang Langner wrote:
> On 7/13/06, Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <ashemedai at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Things that struck me as peculiar is the old:
> >
> > if __name__ == "__main__":
> >     whatever()
> >
> > This is so out of tune with the rest of python it becomes a nuisance.
>
> It is not beautiful but very useful.
> In Python 3000 we can replace it with:
>
> @main
> def whatever():
>     ...
>
> to mark this function as main function if module executed directly.

Why not simply:

    def __main__():
        ...

or even pass in the command-line arguments:

    def __main__(*args):
        ...

Having to 'import sys' to get at the command-line arguments always
seemed awkward to me.  'import sys' feels like it should be a
privileged operation (access to interpreter internals), and getting
the command-line args isn't privileged.


-- ?!ng