New submission from Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis Arfrever.FTA@GMail.Com:

It's undocumented that imp.find_module("") and imp.find_module(".") try to find __init__.py.

There is also a small difference in behavior between them. sys.path by default contains "" as the first element, which is sufficient for imp.find_module("."), but not for imp.find_module(""):

$ mkdir /tmp/imp_tests $ cd /tmp/imp_tests $ touch __init__.py $ python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; print(repr(sys.path[0])); print(imp.find_module("."))' '' (None, '.', ('', '', 5)) $ python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; print(repr(sys.path[0])); print(imp.find_module(""))' '' Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> ImportError: No module named ''

If sys.path contains path (e.g. "." or absolute path) to directory with __init__.py file, then imp.find_module("") will succeed:

$ PYTHONPATH="." python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; print(repr(sys.path[0:2])); print(imp.find_module("."))' ['', '/tmp/imp_tests'] (None, '.', ('', '', 5)) $ PYTHONPATH="." python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; print(repr(sys.path[0:2])); print(imp.find_module(""))' ['', '/tmp/imp_tests'] (None, '/tmp/imp_tests/', ('', '', 5)) $ python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; sys.path.insert(1, "."); print(repr(sys.path[0:2])); print(imp.find_module("."))' ['', '.'] (None, '.', ('', '', 5)) $ python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; sys.path.insert(1, "."); print(repr(sys.path[0:2])); print(imp.find_module(""))' ['', '.'] (None, './', ('', '', 5))

I think that imp.find_module(".") and imp.find_module("") should have the same behavior, and this behavior should be documented.

---------- assignee: docs@python components: Documentation, Interpreter Core messages: 144531 nosy: Arfrever, docs@python priority: normal severity: normal status: open title: imp.find_module("") and imp.find_module(".") versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.2, Python 3.3

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