Importing modules

Mudcat mnations at gmail.com
Wed Jan 21 10:45:27 EST 2009


This is something I've wondered about for a while. I know that
theoretically Python is supposed to auto-recognize duplicate imports;
however I've run into problems in the past if I didn't arrange the
imports in a certain way across multiple files. As a result, I worry
about conflicts that arise because something has been imported twice.
So...I'm not sure if Python *always* gets this correct.

Also, I understand what you're saying about the organization of files
based on modules and maybe regrouping based on use. However I like the
organization of my files to be a grouping of logical components in my
application. This makes it easy to keep things separated and keeps
files from getting to long (which takes longer to program because
you're always bouncing up and down large files). As a result, if I
have to worry about grouping by shared modules then it makes that more
difficult.

I think it would great to have access to a file (like the __init__.py
file for packages) which all the files in the same directory would
have access to for common imports. That way you could push out the
repeated imports and also clean up the look a little bit as well.


On Jan 7, 11:53 am, Paul McGuire <pt... at austin.rr.com> wrote:
> ...and don't worry about a possible performance issue of importing os
> (or any other module) multiple times - the Pythonimportmanager is
> smart enough to recognize previously importedmodules, and wontimport
> them again.
>
> If a module uses the os module, then it shouldimportit - that's just
> it.
>
> Another consideration might be that you are breaking up your own
> programmodulestoo much.  For instance, if I had a program in which I
> were importing urllib in lots ofmodules, it might indicate that I
> still have some regrouping to do, and that I could probably gather all
> of my urllib dependent code into a single place.
>
> -- Paul




More information about the Python-list mailing list