if __name__=='__main__': main()

[jaime suarez]

I am trying to run a script from IDLE and
I get an error message saying

main()
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

main() is properly defined, the same script
runs under PythonWin.

How do you go about running a script from
inside IDLE?

Thank you in advance,
Jaime

[Andrew Koenig]

jaime> I am trying to run a script from IDLE and
jaime> I get an error message saying

jaime> main()
jaime> ^
jaime> SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I'll bet it's an indentation error or something like that.

Can you post the entire code, or at least enough context
to make it clear what's going on?

--
Andrew Koenig, a...@research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark

[Andrew Henshaw]

jaime suarez wrote:

Does your code look something like this?

if __name__ == '__main__':
main()

def main():
print 'spam'

If so, then you will need to move the definition before its use, like so:

def main():
print 'spam'

if __name__ == '__main__':
main()

Andy

[Peter Hansen]

Andrew Henshaw wrote:
>
> jaime suarez wrote:
>
> > I am trying to run a script from IDLE and
> > I get an error message saying
> >
> > main()
> > ^
> > SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> >

> Does your code look something like this?
>
> if __name__ == '__main__':
> main()
>
> def main():
> print 'spam'
>
> If so, then you will need to move the definition before its use, like so:

This would lead to a NameError, not a SyntaxError, so it's unfortunately
not likely the cause, valid though your advice is.

-Peter

[Andrew Henshaw]

Peter Hansen wrote:

Very nicely put, thank you. It's amazing how easy it is to to overlook
facts when you're "sure" of the answer.

Thanks again,

Andy

[jaime suarez]

Andrew Koenig <a...@research.att.com> wrote in message news:<yu998yyk...@europa.research.att.com>...

> jaime> I am trying to run a script from IDLE and
> jaime> I get an error message saying
>
> jaime> main()
> jaime> ^
> jaime> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>
> I'll bet it's an indentation error or something like that.
>
> Can you post the entire code, or at least enough context
> to make it clear what's going on?

Andrew,
Thank you for your reply. Even though I know the
source of the problem now, I am attaching the code
so that maybe somone can learn from my mistake.

def hello(msg):
print "Hello, " + msg

def main():
import sys
print "Script name is", sys.argv[0]
if len(sys.argv)>=2:
hello(sys.argv[1])
else:
hello("Please say something next time")

if __name__=='__main__':
main()

THE PROBLEM is that I had to enter a newline after
main()!!

Thank you very much for your help

[Jeremy Hylton]

jaime....@crossmatch.net (jaime suarez) wrote in message news:<d3f86b28.02122...@posting.google.com>...

> if __name__=='__main__':
> main()
>
> THE PROBLEM is that I had to enter a newline after
> main()!!
>

Here's a late response to this issue. I was just butting heads with
it on Tuesday, so the it seems fresh for me.

This error only occurs if you are parsing a string. Python's parser
has separate APIs for parsing from a file (a C FILE *) and from a
string (a C char *). The file version of the parser APIs doesn't
require a trailing newline, but the string version does. This
difference is a bug in the implementation. Neither version of the API
should care about the trailing newline.

Jeremy