Getting a Syntax Error at "main__':"

You forgot the __ before main. Like this:

if __name__ == '__main__':

Hi Nicholas,

I know that this is a pretty old answer, so you've probably moved on from this problem but in case anyone else stumbles into the same problem:

The most likely reason for you to get a syntax error at the end of the following valid code

if __name__ == "__main__":

is because you have a syntax error earlier in the code, but it's not until the interpreter gets to the end of this statement that it realises that there is a problem. A common syntax error you might have is a missing close parenthesis on the last line of your code before this statement. Something like the following would trigger the problem you describe:

print("Hello, world!"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print("hello again")

As for the other problem that's come up in this thread, the case of the disappearing underscore characters, this is because this site uses Markdown and Markdown treats text enclosed in double underscores as strong emphasis (typically rendered as bold). You might not have realised this when you were reviewing the Markdown Cheatsheet linked at the bottom of every Comment page because the Cheatsheet only lists ** as code for strong emphasis, but if you check out the official syntax documentation for Markdown, you'll see that ** and __ are equivalent. To avoid having Markdown apply styling to your code snippets you need to wrap the code in backticks (as per the Cheatsheet).

Hope that helps,

Regards

Alex