newbie question

[David C. Ullrich]

In article 
<f2fd606a-d92b-434f-932e-fbf24e929d5b at h5g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
 Nan <nan.li.g at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>    I just started to use Python. I wrote the following code and
> expected 'main' would be called.
> 
> def main():
>   print "hello"
> 
> main
> 
> But I was wrong. I have to use 'main()' to invoke main. The python
> interpreter does not give any warnings for the above code. Is there
> any way/tool to easily detect this kind of errors ?

It's valid Python - it's only an error because it doesn't
do what you want.

The reason you're required to include the parentheses with
a function call is that in Python there are _other_ things
you might want to do with a function other than call it.
For example you can pass a function as a parameter to another
function. Silly example:

def twice(f):
  f()
  f()

def main():
  print 'hello'

twice(main)

Before trying it, figure out what would happen if you said
twice(main()) .

A slightly more interesting example: twice(f) simply calls
f twice. double(f) returns a new function; when you call that
new function it calls f twice:

def double(f):
  def res():
    f()
    f()
  return res

def main():
  print 'hello'

The point being that this example shows how sometimes you
want those parentheses and sometimes you don't. Either one
of the following is a way to call main twice:

mainmain = double(main)
mainmain()

or

double(main)()

When I said mainmain = double(main) I left off the
final parentheses because I didn't want to call mainmain
just then, I just wanted to set mainmain to the right thing.



> Thanks !

-- 
David C. Ullrich