Import trouble

[Frans Englich]

Hello all,

I have a couple of questions related to module importing.

1) When I start my Python program with `python foo.py` instead of simply 
adding a interpreter comment on the first line and do `./foo.py`, some 
"local" imports fails, I guess because current working directory is 
different. Is CWD the only difference between running `python foo.py` and 
`./foo.py`? What is the recommended way? (I guess security is one aspect that 
can be argued)

2) I use Python modules which are not usually installed(libxml2/libxslt) and 
want to fail gracefully in case the modules aren't available; print an 
informative message. Since these imports are done in several related 
programs, I don't want to duplicate the code, but instead centralize it. The 
problem is that when I put the module imports/exception code in a function, 
it is as if it wasn't imported, even though there was no exceptions. I 
suspect this is because the import is only done into the current namespace: 
the function scope(instead of file scope as I want). Is there any solution to 
my problem? Or should I solve it in another way?

3) And the last -- but funniest -- import problem: sometimes imports of 
modules in "xml." fails, sometimes it works. For example, this code:
from xml.dom.minidom import getDOMImplementation
impl = getDOMImpmentation() #NameError: name 'getDOMImpmentation' is not 
defined

fails as shown, and other times it works. When running pydoc as local web 
server, it also sometimes fails, although I haven't been able to reproduce 
for a error message. I have recent versions of PyXML and 4suite installed. 

What is wrong? Any idea what that could be wrong with my setup, which could 
cause this?


Cheers,

	Frans