[Python-Dev] Document None values in sys.modules?

[Brett Cannon]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 19:48, Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org>wrote:

> 2009/7/23 Brett Cannon <brett at python.org>:
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 19:38, Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> 2009/7/23 Brett Cannon <brett at python.org>:
> >> > None in Python 3.1 is really useless in terms of its semantics in
> >> > relative
> >> > imports; importlib doesn't support it and still passes as __import__
> (at
> >> > least last time I ran the test suite that way). I thought we had
> agreed
> >> > a
> >> > while back that supporting None was not warranted in Python 3.0?
> >> > Otherwise I
> >> > will do whatever work is necessary for this to happen.
> >>
> >> I think it's still nice for the rare cases where you need to trick a
> >> module into thinking another one doesn't exist.
> >
> > But None does not strictly mean "I don't exist". None is supposed to
> trigger
> > an another import attempt for the module with a top-level name. It's that
> > extra import trigger that has no real use in 3.0 and just complicates
> import
> > semantics (IMO) needlessly. If you want a module to not exist then you
> > either stick something else in (e.g. '42') or we remove the special
> > semantics for None (which I thought we had).
>
>
> I didn't realize None had other semantics attached to it. (Imagine
> that dealing with import!) +1 for making it simply indicate an
> ImportError.


I'm +0 with having import raise ImportError if None is set in sys.modules as
long as we don't suddenly expect loaders to trigger the same thing if they
return None (actually, as of right now what loaders return count for
nothing, but just want to be clear).

-Brett
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