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Comments on Understanding the `if __name__ == '__main__':` idiom
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Understanding the `if __name__ == '__main__':` idiom
I've seen many examples of Python scripts that include a line that says:
if __name__ == '__main__':
Sometimes the following block contains a bunch of code, but other times it just makes a single function call (like main()), or some variant along the lines of
import sys
# other stuff here...
def main(args):
...
if __name__ == '__main__':
sys.exit(main(sys.argv[1:]))
I can see that this must be checking the value of some __name__ global variable - but that isn't defined anywhere in the code.
Why would there be such a variable, and why might it be equal to __main__? What is the purpose of doing this check, and why might I include it in my own code?
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