How to guard against bugs like this one?

[Chris Rebert]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 6:34 PM, kj <no.email at please.post> wrote:
> I just spent about 1-1/2 hours tracking down a bug.
<snip>
> Through a *lot* of trial an error I finally discovered that the
> root cause of the problem was the fact that, in the same directory
> as buggy.py, there is *another* innocuous little script, totally
> unrelated, whose name happens to be numbers.py.  (This second script
> is one I wrote as part of a little Python tutorial I put together
> months ago, and is not much more of a script than hello_world.py;
> it's baby-steps for the absolute beginner.  But apparently, it has
> a killer name!  I had completely forgotten about it.)
>
> Both scripts live in a directory filled with *hundreds* little
> one-off scripts like the two of them.  I'll call this directory
> myscripts in what follows.
>
> It turns out that buggy.py imports psycopg2, as you can see, and
> apparently psycopg2 (or something imported by psycopg2) tries to
> import some standard Python module called numbers; instead it ends
> up importing the innocent myscript/numbers.py, resulting in *absolute
> mayhem*.
>
> (This is no mere Python "wart"; this is a suppurating chancre, and
> the fact that it remains unfixed is a neverending source of puzzlement
> for me.)
>
> How can the average Python programmer guard against this sort of
> time-devouring bug in the future (while remaining a Python programmer)?
> The only solution I can think of is to avoid like the plague the
> basenames of all the 200 or so /usr/lib/pythonX.XX/xyz.py{,c} files,
> and *pray* that whatever name one chooses for one's script does
> not suddenly pop up in the appropriate /usr/lib/pythonX.XX directory
> of a future release.
>
> What else can one do?  Let's see, one should put every script in its
> own directory, thereby containing the damage.
>
> Anything else?
>
> Any suggestion would be appreciated.

I think absolute imports avoid this problem:

from __future__ import absolute_import

For details, see PEP 328:
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0328/

Cheers,
Chris
--
http://blog.rebertia.com