The Python Journey - My AoC Template

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I like to start each AoC challenge using this template file. It brings together everything we’ve covered in the Python Journey so far.

"""
Author: Darren
Date: 01/12/2021

Solving https://adventofcode.com/2021/day/1

Solution overview:

"""
from pathlib import Path
import logging
import time

logging.basicConfig(format="%(asctime)s.%(msecs)03d:%(levelname)s:%(name)s:\t%(message)s", 
                    datefmt='%H:%M:%S')
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

SCRIPT_DIR = Path(__file__).parent
INPUT_FILE = Path(SCRIPT_DIR, "input/sample_input.txt")
# INPUT_FILE = Path(SCRIPT_DIR, "input/input.txt")

def main():
    with open(INPUT_FILE, mode="rt") as f:
        data = f.read().splitlines()
        
    logger.debug(data)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    t1 = time.perf_counter()
    main()
    t2 = time.perf_counter()
    logger.info("Execution time: %0.4f seconds", t2 - t1)

A couple of things I haven’t discussed so far:

• I’m using a docstring block at the top of each program, as a way to docuemnt the code. The module docstring should go at the very top of the file, and should always be enclosed by triple-quotes.
• I put all the main code inside a function called main(). To define a function, we just use the def keyword.
• When the program is launched, I test whether the file being executed (e.g. my_prog.py) is being executed as a standalone script, or whether it has been imported into another script. Well, it is generally being executed as a standalone script, which causes the script’s __name__ to evaluate to __main__. As a result, we know that the following statement evaluates to True:
  if __name__ == "__main__"
• This causes the program to run the main() function. We’ve wrapped the main() function with time.perf_counter() calls, so that we can finally print the overall time taken by the script to execute.

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