How to tell if I'm being run from a shell or a module

[Chris]

On Feb 14, 7:21 pm, dg.google.gro... at thesamovar.net wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Is there any standard way to tell if the user is running from a module
> or from an interactive shell like IDLE or IPython? The best I've come
> up with so far is for a function to look at
> getouterframes(currentframe())[1][1] (the filename in the frame record
> of the frame that called the function), and check if it exists or not
> with os.path.exists. IPython gives '(ipython console)' and IDLE gives
> 'pyshell#0' whereas running from a module gives its filename. This
> seems a bit hacky. Any better ideas?
>
> --
> Dan Goodmanhttp://thesamovar.net/contact

If you're just trying to prevent some actions from happening if
something loads your script as a module just put the 'action items'
under an if like:
if __name__ == '__main__':
    do_the_cool_stuff()

All your functions inside the file will remain in-tact but it won't
execute anything.