[Python-Dev] importing from files with currently invalid names

[Skip Montanaro]

I just responded to and closed a bug report which asked why

    import report-manager

or

    import "report-manager"

doesn't work.  It got me to thinking, with the import ... as ... form Python
could support importing from non-identifier file names by giving some
variant of the file name as a string literal:

    import "report-manager" as report_manager

    import "report-manager.py" as report_manager

    import "/etc/site/parameters" as report_manager

Is that extra flexibility possibly worthwhile?  I know Guido's not keen on
polluting the import statement with path information (the third case), but
the others seem like they might be useful.

Adding this support shouldn't break anything since the language grammar
doesn't currently support string literals as the module name.

Skip