Guido wrote:

(Barry prefers that there's only one class per file; fortunately I don't have that hangup. :-)

So how about a single .py file containing a module and one-or-more submodules? (Sounds like Barry will definitely not like it... ;-) ) Specifically, I wanted to allow easy isolated import of the PyUnit assertion functions, something like: from unittest.assertions import * There are a few ways of refactoring unittest.py to support this, but part of the beauty of PyUnit is the single, independent file. Consulting the Python Reference Manual, I couldn't find anything that forbade a single file from containing submodules, so I came up with the following implementation, which works in Jython 2.1 and Python 2.2: import new import sys import types class Assertions: failureException = AssertionError def failUnless(self, expr, msg=None): """Fail the test unless the expression is true.""" if not expr: raise self.failureException, msg #... def __publishAsModule( name, dict ): submodule = new.module( name ) submodule.__dict__.update( dict ) sys.modules[ name ] = submodule return submodule def __getMethods( instance ): methods = {} for name, member in instance.__class__.__dict__.items(): if type( member ) is types.FunctionType: methods[name] = getattr( instance, name ) return methods assertions = __publishAsModule( __name__ + ".assertions", __getMethods( Assertions() ) ) So, is this an egregious abuse of a regrettable oversight in the specification, or a reasonable way to publish multiple modules from a single .py file? Thanks kb