pääohjelman

Pääohjelman is the genitive form of pääohjelma, the Finnish term for the main program—the central executable that drives an application. In software development, the main program is the entry point that starts the software, initializes resources, handles command-line or user input, and coordinates the execution of other components. The exact form of the main program depends on the programming language and the system design.

In C and C++, the entry point is typically the function int main(int argc, char* argv[]). In Java, the entry point is a class that provides a public static void main(String[] args) method. In Python and similar languages, a common pattern is to define a main() function and invoke it from a guarded block such as if __name__ == '__main__':, allowing the module to be used both as a script and as an importable library. In embedded and real-time systems, the main program may run inside an endless loop, performing periodic tasks or managing hardware resources, sometimes under an operating system.

Documentation and education frequently refer to pääohjelman when discussing the structure, initialization sequence, error handling, and interaction with libraries and user interfaces. The term emphasizes the central role of this program file within a larger software project and how it integrates various modules into a working application.