[Python-Dev] 'import as'

[Thomas Wouters]

On Thu, Aug 17, 2000 at 10:07:04PM -0400, Gordon McMillan wrote:
> Thomas Wouters wrote:

> > The other issue is the change in semantics for 'from-import'.

> Um, maybe I'm not seeing something, but isn't the effect of "import
> goom.bah as snarf" the same as "from goom import bah as snarf"?

I don't understand what you're saying here. 'import goom.bah' imports goom,
then bah, and the resulting module in the local namespace is 'goom'. That's
existing behaviour (which I find perplexing, but I've never ran into before
;) which has changed in a reliable way: the local name being stored,
whatever it would have been in a normal import, is changed into the
"as-name" by "as <name>".

If you're saying that 'import goom.bah.baz as b' won't do what people
expect, I agree. (But neither does 'import goom.bah.baz', I think :-)

> Both forms mean that we don't end up looking for (the aliased) bah in
> another namespace, (thus both forms fall prey to the circular import
> problem).

Maybe it's the early hour, but I really don't understand the problem here.
Ofcourse we end up looking 'bah' in the other namespace, we have to import
it. And I don't know what it has to do with circular import either ;P

> Why not just disallow "from ... import ... as ..."?

That would kind of defeat the point of this change. I don't see any
unexpected behaviour with 'from .. import .. as ..'; the object mentioned
after 'import' and before 'as' is the object stored with the local name
which follows 'as'. Why would we want to disallow that ?

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net>

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