[Python-ideas] Python hook just before NameError

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 3:58 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> For decimal, that's not much of an advantage, but some modules are quite
> expensive to import the first time, and you might not want to pay that
> cost at application start-up.

Even more so if this is done for _every module in the system_. I'm
thinking of testing this out; creating a lazy import object for every
single findable module, although before I start that, I'll see if I
can hunt down a tab-completion routine rather than manually searching
sys.path. In theory, enumerating modules shouldn't take too long (it's
not like I have network mounts in PYTHONPATH), so if that's
sufficiently fast, I might toss that into a permanent startup script,
rather than having my current "import on NameError" trap. Small
downside: This *does* require that the modules all exist at process
start and never get renamed or deleted. I'm sure that'll be a problem
in some obscure case somewhere, but probably not a practical issue :)

ChrisA