Q: import statement within a function

[Tomasz Lisowski]

This is perhaps rather a basic question, but ...

I have seen often import statements included within a function's body, not
in the global scope, as it is most common.

Approach 1:
-------------
def fun(s):
    ...
    import string
    words=string.split(s)

as compared to:

Approach 2:
-------------
import string

def fun(s):
    ...
    words=string.split(s)


What are the advantages of the first approach over the second. Won't Python
do the importing job many times, each time the function fun() is called?

Regards,
Tomasz Lisowski