[Python-Dev] Relative import

[Devin]

I've been monitoring all of this discussion about relative imports, and 
have my own humble idea about how to spell relative imports.

The first part stems from Guido's idea about using a '.' at the beginning 
of a relative import.  It seemed a bit weird at first, but I eventually 
became very comfortable with the idea after thinking about it in respect 
to absolute imports.  I'll explain what I mean.

If you currently want to import a module 'a.b.c.d', you write:

    import a.b.c.d

Now, if you're in the module 'a.b', you could still write:

    import a.b.c.d

... but the 'a.b' part is redundant because you're already in the module 
'a.b'.  If you take away 'a.b', then you end up with:

    import .c.d

This flowed well in my head, and looks natural.  However, the suggestion
about '.' or '..' referring to the parent looks _ugly and unnatural_.

Let's say '.' was used to spell "parent module", and let's assume that 
the module 'a.b.c.d' wants to import 'a.b.e'.  The absolute import would 
be spelled:

    import a.b.e

... and the relative import would be spelled:

    import .....e # .[parent].[parent].e

Yuck! (no offense :)

What's needed, I believe, is an identifier/keyword/symbol that spells
'parent' that isn't '.'.  Assuming that symbol is represented by
'[parent]', the above relative import would look like:

    import .[parent].[parent].e

... which is a hell lot more clear IMHO.

My initial idea is to spell parent '__parent__', and to have '__parent__'
be a module-level variable in each module that refers to the parent module
(where a top-level module might have '__parent__' refer to itself, or to
None).  Continuing with the above example, the relative import would be
spelled:

    import .__parent__.__parent__.e

... but I'm not completely convinced that there's not a better 
identifier/keyword/symbol that could be substituted for '[parent]'.

If I'm completely off track, then tell me and I'll continue to lurk until
I get a better feel for the happenings of python-dev.

-- 
Devin
devin at whitebread.org
http://www.whitebread.org/