[Python-ideas] Allow imports to a global name

[Sven Marnach]

Sometimes it is useful to do a import to a global name inside a
function.  A common use case is the 'pylab' module, which must be
imported *after* the backend has been set using 'matplotlib.use()'.
If the backend is configuration-dependent, the statement

    import pylab

will usually be inside a function, but the module should be available
globally, so you would do

    global pylab
    import pylab

While this code works (at least in CPython), the current language
specification forbids it [1], so the correct code should be

    global pylab
    import pylab as _pylab
    pylab = _pylab

I don't see why we shouldn't allow the shorter version -- it is
certainly easier to read.

The behaviour of pylab might be considered a questionable design
choice.  I've encountered the above non-conforming, but working code
out in the wild several times, though, so the language specification
might as well allow it.

Cheers,
    Sven

[1]: http://docs.python.org/dev/reference/simple_stmts.html#the-global-statement