7.6 Chapter summary

Highlights from this chapter include:

Programs can be organized into multiple .py files (modules). The import keyword allows a program to use functions defined in another .py file.
The from keyword can be used to import specific functions from a module. However, programs should avoid importing (or defining) multiple functions with the same name.
Modules often include the line if __name__ == "__main__" to prevent code from running as a side effect when the module is imported by other programs.
When working in a shell, the help function can be used to look up the documentation for a module. The documentation is generated from the docstrings.
Python comes with over 200 built-in modules and hundreds of thousands of third-party modules. Programmers can search for modules on docs.python.org and pypi.org.

**Table 7.3** Chapter 7 reference.
Statement	Description
`import module`	Imports a module for use in another program.
`from module import function`	Imports a specific function from a module.
`if __name__ == "__main__":`	A line of code found at the end of many modules. This statement indicates what code to run if the module is executed as a program (in other words, what code not to run if this module is imported by another program).
`help(module_name)`	Shows the documentation for the given module. The documentation includes the module's docstring, followed by a list of functions defined in the module, followed by a list of global variables assigned in the module, followed by the module's file name.
`help(function_name)`	Shows the docstring for the given function.
`date(2023, 2, 14)`	Creates a `date` object representing February 14, 2023. Requires: `from datetime import date`.

Adapted from Introduction to Python Programming by OpenStax (openstax.org), licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Changes were made. License: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.