Why does pool run the entire file multiple times?

Question

I\'m trying to understand the output from this Python 2.7.5 example script:

import time
from multiprocessing import Pool

print(time.strftime(\'%Y-%m-%d %H:%         


        

Answer 1

Python imports the __main__ module for each process. On an import, the whole file is executed again. On python 3, if you remove the if __name__ == '__main__' you will get an infinite loop since the file is getting recursively called.

For the real question:

In python scripts, I typically try to avoid executing any statements or variables on the global scope except for function definitions. I use the below as a template for all python scripts.

import sys

def main(argv):
  #main logic here

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main(sys.argv)

When you have a script with re-usable functions, even if it has a main method, you can import it into another script if you need to.