On Sun, 10 Apr 2022, 15:53 Guido van Rossum, <guido@python.org> wrote:
On Sun, Apr 10, 2022 at 2:31 AM Daniel Pope <lord.mauve@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 8 Apr 2022, 17:44 Guido van Rossum, <guido@python.org> wrote:
The interesting idea here seems to make "lazy imports" easier to implement by making them explicit in the code. So far, most lazy import frameworks for Python have done hacks with `__getattribute__` overrides.
The value is more than ease of implementation. Having syntax for import expressions makes them statically analysable, which is needed for type checkers and IDE autocompletion.
This has been brought up a few times and I don't get it. Currently a use of an imported module is perfectly analyzable by all the static type checkers I know of (e.g. mypy, Pyre, pyright).
I was comparing a hypothetical import expression syntax with alternatives like __getattribute__ hacks, which I take to mean somemagicobject.package.module.attribute, or as other have suggested, importlib.import_module(). I believe those are not statically analysable at least without special casing them in the type checker. An import expression would be just as statically analysable as a statement, while being more ergonomic in certain situations.