[Python-Dev] Import by filename with __import__ ?

[Guido van Rossum]

Sounds like a coincidence. Looks like it's using os.path.join(X, name
+ ".py") where X is a member of sys.path, e.g. the initial ".". This
gives good results for valid module names (which never contain
slashes) but in this example, os.path.join() ignores the first
component if the second starts with '/'.

Feel free to add a check that the module name doesn't contain '/',
'\\' or '.'. (I think that silently accepting other non-identifier
characters is fine, since it doesn't interfere with parsing either the
module name or the filename.)

On Jan 8, 2008 9:09 PM, Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de> wrote:
> Today I stumbled about an unknown and undocumented (?) feature. At least
> it's not documented in our docs. __import__ can import a module by file
> name:
>
> >>> open("/tmp/example.py", "w").write("test = 23\n")
> >>> mod = __import__("/tmp/example")
> >>> mod
> <module '/tmp/example' from '/tmp/example.py'>
> >>> mod.__name__
> '/tmp/example'
> >>> mod.__file__
> '/tmp/example.py'
> >>> mod.test
> 23
>
> Is it just a coincidence? Is it a desired feature? Why isn't it documented?
>
> Christian
>
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--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)