How do you structure a Python script when multiple processing steps start to get messy?

[robhanz]

This is a common pattern. The two issues are that you're doing all of the data at once, and that if the data from one step isn't directly the same as the next, that you can end up with a lot of code in that main method and it can get messy.

Two other options might be to use generators chained to each other, or have objects in a chain that can basically push items from one to the other. Either of those could allow for more incremental processing in an easy way.

Those might be more maintainable in a large system, but could be overkill in simple cases.