Why "flat is better than nested"?

[John Nagle]

On 10/25/2010 6:34 AM, Alex Willmer wrote:
> On Oct 25, 11:07 am, kj<no.em... at please.post>  wrote:
>> In "The Zen of Python", one of the "maxims" is "flat is better than
>> nested"?  Why?  Can anyone give me a concrete example that illustrates
>> this point?
>
> I take this as a reference to the layout of the Python standard
> library and other packages i.e. it's better to have a module hierarchy
> of depth 1 or 2 and many top level items, than a depth of 5+ and only
> a few top level items.
>
> For instance
>
> import re2
> import sqlite3
> import logging
>
> import something_thirdparty
>
> vs
>
> import java.util.regex
> import java.sql
> import java.util.logging

   As in

	Python 2: import urllib	
	Python 3: import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error

http://diveintopython3.org/porting-code-to-python-3-with-2to3.html

				John Nagle