Jabba Laci <jabba.l...@gmail.com> writes: > Is there a convention for this? Should main() be at the top and called > function below?
No, it's Python convention for both of those to be at the end of the module. I follow the convention described by Guido van Rossum in <URL:http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4829>. Essentially, the mainline code is all in a top-level function, which accepts command-line arguments in its ‘argv’ parameter, catches any ‘SystemExit’ exception, and returns the exit code for the program. The ‘if __name__ == "__main__"’ section does nothing but call that function, passing the ‘sys.argv’ value, then exit with the return value. This makes the whole behaviour of the program available for calling as a function, while the program works as expected when invoked as a program. Commonly I will name the function ‘__main__’, but this is an artefact of my previously-held vain hope that this idiom would become special to Python and called automatically without the ‘if __name__ …’ hack. Guido, and most others I've seen use this idiom, simply name the function ‘main’. -- \ “An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.” | `\ —Donald Robert Perry Marquis | _o__) | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
