why a main() function?

[Benjamin Niemann]

beliavsky at aol.com wrote:

> I think I read a suggestion somewhere to wrap the code where a Python
> script starts in a main() function, so one has
> 
> def main():
>     print "hi"
> 
> main()
> 
> instead of
> 
> print "hi"
> 
> What are the advantages of doing this?

Refine this to:

def main():
    print "hi"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

The advantage of the 'if __name__ ..' statement is that you can import the
script without running the 'main' code, e.g. from your unittest module.

Wrapping the main code in a function allows you to call this function from
your unittests and test it like any other function.

Additionally I do usually add an 'argv' argument to main() which I use
instead of sys.argv, so I can easily test it with different arguments.

-- 
Benjamin Niemann
Email: pink at odahoda dot de
WWW: http://pink.odahoda.de/