In Maya, how to launch a python script in a python script

Question

I want to make a def that is launching the script given in the str variable :

def launchScript(scriptname):
    import scriptname
    reload(scriptname)
    scriptname.do()

so I can do :

launchScript(test)

and it would launch the do() def from my test script

Answer 1

The easy way to do this is to make your script executable and then use execfile to run it: something like this:

# scriptfile.py

import maya.cmds as cmds
def do():
     cmds.polyCube(n='new_cube')

if __name__ == '__main__':
   do()

the if __name__ == '__main__' block will run if the file is being executed but not if it's imported as as a module. Strictly speaking you could get by without it if you know you'll never use the file as a module.

In maya you just do

 execfile ("path/to/scriptFile.py")

and it will run do() automatically. Unlike importing a module you won't need to use reload(), everything in the file will be re-done on each execfile()

In general this is fine for testing but not something you'll want to do for production code -- if nothing else, you'll paying the time to read the file off of disk on every run.