Accessing variables in __main__ from modules....

[nanotech at europa.com]

All:

When writing programs, I like to add print statements that are only 
displayed when the user provides a command line switch such as '--
debug'.

  Ex:  %myprog spam.txt ham
       Found the word 'ham' in 'spam.txt' 45 times

       %myprog --debug spam.txt ham
       -I-: Reading 'spam.txt'....has 213 lines....
       Found the word 'ham' in 'spam.txt' 45 times

Now, say most of the work is done in a module 'spam.py'. If I wrote 
code in this module like:

  lines=open(filename).readlines()
  if (DEBUG):
    print "-I-: Reading '%s'....has %s lines...."%(filename,len
(lines))

DEBUG would be searched for at the module scope. But I want it to 
look for DEBUG back in __main__, like:

  if (sys.modules["__main__"].DEBUG):
    print "-I-: Reading '%s'....has %s lines...."%len(filename,lines)

Is this the "best" way to access variable in the "__main__" scope? 
How else might I solve this (in the python way)??

Quentin Crain

Note: I might load many modules all wanting to know if DEBUG is 
turned on. I do not want to pass DEBUG to functions or classes and I 
do not want to set a module variable DEBUG to the same value 
(module1.DEBUG=DEBUG, module2.DEBUG=DEBUG, etc. in __main__). Unless 
these are "better" solutions! :)