Usage of main()

[Carl Banks]

On Sep 3, 11:39 pm, Simon Brunning <si... at brunningonline.net> wrote:
> 2009/9/4 Manuel Graune <manuel.gra... at koeln.de>:
>
> > How come the main()-idiom is not "the standard way" of writing a
> > python-program (like e.g. in C)?
>
> Speaking for myself, it *is* the standard way to structure a script. I
> find it more readable, since I can put my main function at the very
> top where it's visible, with the classes and functions it makes use of
> following in some logical sequence.
>
> I suspect that this is the case for many real-world scripts. Perhaps
> it's mainly in books and demos where the extra stuff is left out so
> the reader can focus on what the writer is demonstrating?

Speaking for myself, I almost never put any logic at the top level in
anything other than tiny throwaway scripts.  Top level is for
importing, and defining functions, classes, and constants, and that's
it.

Even when doing things like preprocessing I'll define a function and
call it rather than putting the logic at top-level.  Sometimes I'll
throw in an if-test at top level (for the kind of stuff I might choose
an #if preprocessor statement in C for) but mostly I just put that in
functions.


Carl Banks