Converting a hex string to a number

[Matt Gerrans]

Excellent explanation -- thanks!

I wrote a simple little DOS/Python shell a while back that allowed me to
keep Python loaded and run any script like a normal command (using execfile)
or any DOS command -- it was quite useful on my laptop, epecially combined
with a simple make (Python) script for a Java project.   With this
combination and using Jikes, it beat the pants off ANT for performance.

I was doing this:

def runScript(filename):
   namespace = { '__name__' : '__main__' }
   execfile(filename, namespace)
   return namespace

Which was suggested to me by someone in this group.   Now I see it is
setting up an almost empty dictionary for the called script -- just the
__name__=='__main__' so it will think it was being called from the command
line.