Other uses of the __name__ attribute

I'm learning Python by reading Dive Into Python online, and in Chapter 2 I see that you can use the __name__ attribute for testing purposes, so I was wondering, does anyone k开发者_如何学Cnows about other uses for this attribute? Thanks

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I once had a decorator for a command-line script file.

The decorator was used like this:

@command
def someFunc():
    # code goes here

The decorator was doing something like this:

commands = {}
def command(func)
    commands[func.__name__] = func
    return func

And then I could do something like this:

commandName = raw_input()
commands[commandName]();

Which would read a command's name from the console and call it - if it was labeled with the decorator before (so no dangerous calls would be possible as with input).

(In my code the name was taken from the command-line args, not raw_input.)

This easily let me provide commands accessible via their name. That's one of the uses - a general rule would be "it's useful when you want to add your own semantics to the notion of function definition". The same goes for decorators in general.

(BTW, there's func.func_name field, which is more correct to use than func.__name__ because identifiers starting with __ are supposed to be private in Python, AFAIK - just a minor detail)

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It can be very useful when debugging. When writing frameworks (or any other highly generic piece of software), you can easily debug using name to know what's being passed around.