Executing a Module

In this lesson, you’ll learn about executing a module as a script. Any .py file that contains a module is essentially also a Python script, and there isn’t any reason it can’t be executed like one.

Here’s mod.py, as it was defined earlier:

s = "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
a = [100, 200, 300]

def printy(arg):
    print(f'arg = {arg}')

class Classy:
    pass

This can be run as a script:

$ python3 mod.py

There are no errors, so it apparently worked. Granted, it’s not very interesting. As it is written, it only defines objects. It doesn’t do anything with them, and it doesn’t generate any output.

Let’s modify the above Python module so it does generate some output when run as a script:

s = "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
a = [100, 200, 300]

def printy(arg):
    print(f'arg = {arg}')

class Classy:
    pass

print(s)
print(a)
printy('Good Day Sir!')
x = Classy()
print(x)

Now it should be a little more interesting:

$ python3 mod.py
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
[100, 200, 300]
arg = Good Day Sir!
<__main__.Classy object at 0x10f7a35f8>

Unfortunately, now it also generates output when imported as a module:

>>> import mod
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
[100, 200, 300]
arg = Good Day Sir!
<__main__.Classy object at 0x111324748>

This is probably not what you want. It isn’t usual for a module to generate output when it is imported. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could distinguish between when the file is loaded as a module and when it is run as a standalone script? Ask and ye shall receive!

When a .py file is imported as a module, Python sets the special dunder variable __name__ to the name of the module. However, if a file is run as a standalone script, __name__ is (creatively) set to the string '__main__'. Using this fact, you can see which is the case at run-time and change behavior accordingly:

s = "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
a = [100, 200, 300]

def printy(arg):
    print(f'arg = {arg}')

class Classy:
    pass

if (__name__ == '__main__'):
    print(s)
    print(a)
    printy('Good Day Sir!')
    x = Classy()
    print(x)

Now, if you run as a script, you get output:

$ python3 mod.py
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
[100, 200, 300]
arg = Good Day Sir!
<__main__.Classy object at 0x100a5d5f8>

But if you import as a module, you don’t:

>>> import mod
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__',
'__spec__', 'help', 'mod']
>>> __name__
'__main__'
>>> mod.__name__
'mod'

Modules are often designed with the capability to run as a standalone script for testing the functionality that is contained within the module. This is referred to as unit testing. For example, suppose you have created a module fact.py containing a factorial function, as follows:

def fact(n):
    return 1 if n == 1 else n * fact(n-1)

if (__name__ == '__main__'):
    import sys
    if len(sys.argv) > 1:
        print(fact(int(sys.argv[1])))

You can treat the file as a module and import fact():

>>> from fact import fact
>>> fact(6)
720

But you can also run it as a standalone by passing an integer argument on the command-line for testing:

$ python3 fact.py 6
720

If you would like to learn more about running scripts with command line arguments check out this course on Command Line Interfaces in Python.