[Python-Dev] Relative import

[Barry Warsaw]

On Fri, 2003-12-19 at 16:30, Jack Diederich wrote:

> I'm at least a little confused with what people want, as far as I can tell
> import semantics have three things
>  * what module to import
>  * what name to give that import
>  * where to look for it
> 
> The 'from' keyword seems to be getting overloaded to mean both what module and
> where to find it, which the 'stdlib' tries to resolve.  Most of the
> discussion has been about how to improve 'where to look'

Very interesting observation.

> I like syntax that reads most important left-to-right, so what about
> from MODULE import NAMES as RENAME searching HOW
> or
> import NAMES as RENAME from MODULE searching HOW
> 
> searching could be 'asbolute' 'relative' or any of the other suggested
> words.  If you wanted to get fancy it could be a list, if it isn't a list
> people who truly care could cascade try/except on ImportError.

I want to think about that more, but at first glance, it has some
appeal.  Neat!

-Barry