On Wednesday, March 16, 2016 at 7:43:05 PM UTC-5, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 03:50:53PM -0700, Rick Johnson wrote:
from module _import Foo, bar
That's anything but self-explanatory, since it gives no hint that Foo and bar will be imported under some name other than Foo and bar.
Yes, I'll agree it would be far too esoteric for a language that promotes readability. If i end up writing my own hack though, i'll probably go this way, simply because it's the most compact solution i think of at the moment.
Besides, why is "import x as _x" so special to require special syntax?
Well, for a single symbol, it's not bad. But consider something like: from module import Foo as _Foo, bar as _bar, BAZ as _BAZ, spam as _spam, eggs as _eggs Now, that may seem like a contrived example, but i've witnessed much longer "run-on import lines" than that. 79 chars will be eaten-up really quickly. But what eats up most of the space, is the redundant " as _...". When importing "piecemeal", it's impossible to avoid writing the actual symbol names , but, if we can avoid the redundant repetition of " as _...", it would be an improvement.
Out of the infinite number of names that x could be imported as (import x as y etc) what's so special about _x that it deserves a short-cut?
Not exactly sure what your saying here, but, i'll fancy a guess... If you're suggesting that my syntax would be limited to merely "adding a single leading underscore to the public symbol (or symbols) as they are imported", then yes, you are correct! The intended purpose is to: "automate the privatization of public symbols during the import process". Of course, if they already have a leading underscore, they will remain unchanged. But i wonder what should be done when they have more than one underscore? Hmm...
From my POV, I don't see anything wrong with "single purpose utilities". In fact, i find them to be more intuitive. The whole: "Do one thing, and do it well" philosophy...