[Python-Dev] Odd errors when catching ImportError

[Paul Dubois]

Please excuse me if this is in the bug list; I looked through it but the
list is too long for old people.

I have been running into a number of odd errors caused by code like the
following. The behavior seems to be machine dependent.

fooflag = 0
try:
    import foo
except ImportError:
    fooflag = 1

I have had this result in a seg fault upon exit, and also when something
like this was in file xxx.py inside a package, and the __init__.py did

from xxx import fooflag

I've had it tell me xxx had no attribute fooflag. I added "print fooflag" at
the bottom of the file and it fixed it. That was on a DEC. On Linux it
worked.

I suppose I should be testing for the ability to import foo some other way
but I don't know what it is.