There are more than a few ways. I’ll list them in order of inverted preference (i.e., best first, worst last):
- Treat it like a module:
import file
. This is good because it’s secure, fast, and maintainable. Code gets reused as it’s supposed to be done. Most Python libraries run using multiple methods stretched over lots of files. Highly recommended. Note that if your file is calledfile.py
, yourimport
should not include the.py
extension at the end. - The infamous (and unsafe) exec command: Insecure, hacky, usually the wrong answer. Avoid where possible.
execfile('file.py')
in Python 2exec(open('file.py').read())
in Python 3
- Spawn a shell process:
os.system('python file.py')
. Use when desperate.