Steven> I've been known to monkey-patch builtins in the interactive Steven> interpreter and in test code. Me too. I use a slightly beefed up dir() funcion which identifies modules within a package which haven't been imported yet. Handy for quick-n-dirty introspection. >>> import email >>> dir(email) ['Charset', 'Encoders', 'Errors', 'FeedParser', 'Generator', 'Header', 'Iterators', 'LazyImporter', 'MIMEAudio', 'MIMEBase', 'MIMEImage', 'MIMEMessage', 'MIMEMultipart', 'MIMENonMultipart', 'MIMEText', 'Message', 'Parser', 'Utils', '[_parseaddr]', '[base64mime]', '[charset]', '[encoders]', '[errors]', '[feedparser]', '[generator]', '[header]', '[iterators]', '[message]', '[parser]', '[quoprimime]', '[test/]', '[utils]', '_LOWERNAMES', '_MIMENAMES', '__all__', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__package__', '__path__', '__version__', '_name', 'base64MIME', 'email', 'importer', 'message_from_file', 'message_from_string', 'mime', 'quopriMIME', 'sys'] Those names with [...] bracketing the names are submodules or subpackages of the email package which haven't been imported yet. Skip