Frequently asked Questions Python Tutorial

There are some questions that come up fairly often, and are things that were never actually explained to me either when I was first starting out. I thought it would be good to cover a few of those here!

The first one is this whole if name == main thing. Here's an example:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print('such great module!!!!')

Here, I suggest you reference the video for a full example of how this works, but, basically, if name == main asks whether or not the script is the "main" running script, or if that script is just being referenced by another script. Whenever you import other people's code, they usually have these there, so that, when you import them, their code doesn't just automatically run.

Another curiosity people often have is this other bit of code placed at the top of scripts. Something like:

#!/usr/bin/python

This is what is known as the "shebang" line. It is used for Unix operating systems so the script will execute with Python. If you are on Windows, this is probably totally foreign to you!

Also, while not covered in the video above, I thought I should also add something I forgot to mention at all so far, and that's comments. You've seen my use of the # symbol. That works to create a single line comment like:

# this is a single line comment

You can also do multi-line comments like:

'''
Multiple line comment, can use triple "double quotes" as well to do this.
'''

Finally, you can use triple quotes to do large prints, like:

print(''' 

This is a massive print, where you want to
use multiple lines, maybe make designs, or
something like that. 

''')

I may add more to this page over time, but those should cover it. Those are things that I never saw in any tutorial (besides the comments), but I think they leave people confused.

The next tutorial: Getting User Input Python Tutorial