On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 08:24:27AM +0000, David Aldrich wrote:
> I understand that 'help' works with modules that I have imported. But
> if I've just written a script called main.py (which contains
> get_value()) I don't think I can 'import' that. So how would I see the
> docstrings in main.py?
import main
help(main)
Of course, you have to write main.py so it is intended to be imported.
If you write main.py as a regular script, then importing it the first
time will run the script, which you don't want.
The trick is to put the script functionality in a function, say:
# File script.py
def do_this():
"""This is a helper function"""
...
def main():
"""Main function."""
print("Processing...")
do_this()
do_that()
do_something_else()
print("Done!")
if __name__ == "__main__":
# Run the main script.
main()
By using that pattern, the file "script.py" can be imported at the
interactive interpreter:
import script
help(script.main)
help(script.do_this) # etc.
but of you run it directly, outside the interactive intepreter, the
main() function will run and it will behave as a script as expected.
The reason this works is that when you run a script, Python sets the
magic variable __name__ to "__main__". But when you import it, the
variable is set to the actual name of the file (minus the .py
extension).
--
Steve
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