Is there any advantage to using a main() in python scripts?

[Terry Reedy]

On 12/11/2013 5:26 AM, Ben Finney wrote:

> Better design is to make the argument list a parameter to the ‘main’
> function; this allows constructing an argument list specially for
> calling that function, without ‘main’ needing to know the difference.
>
> You'll also want to catch SystemExit and return that as the ‘main’
> function's return value, to make it easier to use as a function when
> that's needed.
>
>      def main(argv=None):
>          if argv is None:
>              argv = sys.argv
>
>          exit_code = 0
>          try:
>              command_name = argv[0]
>              config = parse_command_args(argv[1:])
>              do_whatever_this_program_does(config)
>          except SystemExit, exc:
>              exit_code = exc.code
>
>          return exit_code
>
>      if __name__ == "__main__":
>          import sys
>          exit_code = main(sys.argv)
>          sys.exit(exit_code)
>
> That way, the normal behaviour is to use the ‘sys.argv’ list and to
> raise SystemExit (via ‘sys.exit’) to exit the program. But ‘main’ itself
> can, without any further changes, be called as a function that receives
> the command line as a parameter, and returns the exit code.

In particular, it is easier to write tests when argv is a parameter.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy