WARNING: This post is primarily an experiment in how to format code in-line in a blog post. If you don’t understand this post, it’s probably because I’m doing a lousy job of explaining myself. I am concentrating on form instead of content. Tune in tomorrow and I’ll probably be back to making some kind of sense. And now, back to your regularly scheduled blog post, already in progress.
I found that there is a style pulldown in WordPress that lets me put preformatted source code in a blog post. Surprisingly enough, it is called ‘Preformatted’. There is an example of how it looks in the box below.
def hello():
print('Hello, world!')
if __name__ == '__main__':
hello()
There are better looking ways to embed source code in a blog post but this is the simplest one. Some of the other ways provide syntax highlighting to make the keywords of the programming language stand out. Most of them provide line numbers to make it easier to talk about the various lines in the program. I will investigate those tools and report back on them as I learn how to use them.
Since I have a piece of Python code to talk about, I will attempt to explain what the program in the box above actually does. When loaded interactively into a Python interpreter, it defines a function called hello() that prints the string Hello,world! on the screen.
If the file containing this code is run from the command line, the variable name is given the value ‘main‘. The code after the if statement at the bottom of the box checks to see if name is equal to ‘main‘ and if so, the function hello() is called in the body of the if statement.
If the code is imported as a library, on the other hand, name will not be equal to ‘main‘, so the body of the if statement will not be executed. The code that imports the file can then call the hello() function at its own discretion.
If you know Python, this post has probably been boring. If you don’t know Python, it has probably been confusing. This post has been more of an exercise in how to format code in a blog post and less of an actual tutorial on Python.
If you are interested in a tutorial on Python, look here. I will probably write more about Python in the future. I will make the code prettier next time. I will make the prose more illuminating. But there is just so much time available to blog each night and I didn’t have time to experiment with formatting and write riveting content in the same post.
Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.