In fact, reuse of the &#39;or&#39; keyword also leads to these nice options:<div><br></div><div>import foo or None as bar</div><div>from foo import bar or None as baz<br><br><div>On Thu Dec 26 2013 at 8:36:24 PM, Amber Yust &lt;<a href="mailto:amber.yust@gmail.com">amber.yust@gmail.com</a>&gt; wrote:</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>On Thu Dec 26 2013 at 7:40:19 PM, Bruce Leban &lt;<a href="mailto:bruce@leapyear.org" target="_blank">bruce@leapyear.org</a>&gt; wrote:</div>
<blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>I think you mean do the import if the name is unbound <i>or bound to None.</i> Otherwise, it doesn&#39;t work in the example you gave. </div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, that is what I meant, sorry. Another option would be &quot;not bound to something that is not a module&quot; - but I think &quot;unbound or None&quot; is probably the most versatile option.</div>
<div><br></div><div></div><div><div>On Thu Dec 26 2013 at 8:08:45 PM, Steven D&#39;Aprano &lt;<a href="mailto:steve@pearwood.info" target="_blank">steve@pearwood.info</a>&gt; wrote:</div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
I&#39;m not (yet) convinced of the need for this functionality, but if<br>Python did gain this, I think I would prefer the colour of this<br>bike-shed to be &quot;perhaps import&quot; rather than &quot;maybe import&quot;.</blockquote>
<div><br></div></div><div><div>Another option would be to re-use the &#39;or&#39; keyword:</div><div><br></div><div>    from foo import bar or None</div><div><br></div><div>Where the bit after the &#39;or&#39; simply specifies a default value to assign if an ImportError occurs. </div>
</div><div><br></div></blockquote></div>