In some python scripts, you may see a function definition and a conditional statement that looks like the example below:
def main():
print(“Hello World!”)
if __name__ == “__main__”:
main()In this code, there is a function called main() that prints the phrase “Hello World!” when the Python interpreter executes it. There is also a conditional (or if) statement that checks the value of __name__ and compares it to the string “__main__”. When the if statement evaluates to True, the Python interpreter executes main().
This code pattern is quite common in Python files that you want to executed as a script and imported in another module. To help understand how this code will execute, you should first understand how the Python interpreter sets __name__ depending on how the code is being executed.
