Sometimes when you are importing from a module, you would like to know whether a modules function is being used as an import, or if you are using the original .py file of that module. In this case we can use the: if __name__ == "__main__": line to determine this. For example: When your script is run by passing it as a command to the Python interpreter: python myscript.py all of the code that is at indentation level 0 gets executed. Functions and classes that are defined are, well, defined, but none of their code gets ran. Unlike other languages, there's no main() function that gets run automatically - the main() function is implicitly all the code at the top level. In this case, the top-level code is an if block. __name__ is a built-in variable which evaluate to the name of the current module. However, if a module is being run directly (as in myscript.py above), then __name__ instead is set to the string "__main__". Thus, you can test whether your script is being run directly or being imported by something else by testing if __name__ == "__main__": ... If that code is being imported into another module, the various function and class definitions will be imported, but the main() code won't get run. As a basic example, consider the following two scripts: # file one.py def func(): print("func() in one.py") print("top-level in one.py") if __name__ == "__main__": print("one.py is being run directly") else: print("one.py is being imported into another module") and then: # file two.py import one print("top-level in two.py") one.func() if __name__ == "__main__": print("two.py is being run directly") else: print("two.py is being imported into another module") Now, if you invoke the interpreter as python one.py The output will be top-level in one.py one.py is being run directly If you run two.py instead: python two.py You get top-level in one.py one.py is being imported into another module top-level in two.py func() in one.py two.py is being run directly Thus, when module one gets loaded, its __name__ equals "one" instead of __main__.