[Python-ideas] PEP for executing a module in a package containing relative imports

[Brett Cannon]

On 4/20/07, Josiah Carlson <jcarlson at uci.edu> wrote:
>
> "Brett Cannon" <brett at python.org> wrote:
> > I realized two things that I didn't mention in the PEP.
> >
> > One is that Python will have to infer the proper package name for a
> > module being executed.  Currently Python only knows the name of a
> > module because you asked for something and it tries to find a module
> > that fits that request.  But what is being proposed here has to figure
> > out what you would have asked for in order for the import to happen.
> > So I need to spell out the algorithm that will need to be used to
> > figure out ``python bacon/__init__.py`` is the bacon package.  Using
> > the '-m' option solves this as the name is given as an argument.
>
> There's also the rub that if you 'run' the module in /a/b/c/d/e/f.py,
> but all a-e are packages, the "proper" semantics may state that you need
> to import a/__init__.py, a/b/__init__.py, etc., prior to the execution
> of f.py .
>
> Of course the only way that you would know that is if you checked the
> paths .../e/, .../d/, etc.
>
> The PEP should probably be changed to state the order of imports in a
> case similar to this, and whether or not it bothers to check ancestor
> paths for package information.
>

Good point.  It's one of the ways my import implementation differs
from the current one as I just import the parent up to the requested
module while the current implementation throws an exception.

-Brett