importing part of a module without executing the rest

[George Sakkis]

On Jun 13, 5:52 pm, krishna.00... at gmail.com wrote:
> file1.py
> ----------
> a = 20
> from abc import *
> print "Should this be printed when 'a'  is alone imported from this
> module"
>
> file2.py
> ----------
> from file1 import a
> print a
>
> (snipped)
>
> Of course, the option of using if __name__ == '__main__' in file1.py
> for statements following 'a = 20' is not useful in my case as I need
> all statements in file1 to be exectued when imported by someone else
> (say file3.py)

That's a bad code smell. In general, modules intended to be imported
should not have any side effects at global scope before the "if
__name__ == '__main__':" part. Put the "print ..." and all other
statements with side effects in one or more functions and let the
importing module call them explicitly if necessary.

George