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Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:36:15 -0200
From: "Pedro Henrique G. Souto" <pedro.h.souto@gmail.com>
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To: python-list@python.org
Subject: Re: Total newbie question: Best practice
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On 30/11/2011 06:50, Shambhu Rajak wrote:
> Collins Congratulations for your first step into Python Programming.
> You can call them script or programs(not necessarily but depends on what your coding for).
> Yaa..it's always a good practice to call it through main(), but it doesn't really matter you
> can call the method in way....
>
> Regards,
> Shambhu
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Colin Higwell [mailto:colinh@somewhere.invalid]
> Sent: 30/11/2011 1:37 AM
> To: python-list@python.org
> Subject: Total newbie question: Best practice
>
> Hi,
>
> I am just starting to learn Python (I have been at it only a few hours),
> so please bear with me. I have a few very small scripts (do you call them
> scripts or programs?) which work properly, and produce the results
> intended.
>
> However, they are monolithic in nature; i.e. they begin at the beginning
> and finish at the end. Having done a little reading, I note that it seems
> to be quite common to have a function main() at the start (which in turn
> calls other functions as appropriate), and then to call main() to do the
> work.
>
> Is that standard best practice?
>
> Thanks

Congratulations on becoming a Pythonist!

Like Shambhu said, it doesn't matter where do you put the code, but is 
interesting to have a main() function when you have a program, and you 
want to differentiate if it is running directly (i.e. python program.py) 
or if it is running as a  module, imported by other program (i.e. import 
program).

To do so, you do this:

main():
     # blablabla

if __name__ == '__main__':
     main()


If the program is running directly, the variable __name__ will be 
'__main__', if not, __name__ will be the name of the module ('program', 
in this case).

Att;
Pedro