how to check if a module is importable?

[Jean-Michel Pichavant]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   finally getting back to clawing my way thru the python 3 book so
> probably a number of newbie questions coming up.  first one -- can i
> check if a module is importable (equivalently, exists on sys.path, i
> assume) without trying to import it first?
>
>   i can see that i can use try/except and just run "import" -- is that
> the accepted way to test?
>
> rday
> --
>   
AFAIK, that is why ImportError is for.

try:
    import module
except ImportError:
    # handle me
    pass

is commonly used.

JM