I thought I understood how import worked...
Mark Lawrence
breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk
Tue Aug 7 13:44:49 EDT 2012
On 07/08/2012 14:18, Roy Smith wrote:
> I've been tracking down some weird import problems we've been having with
> django. Our settings.py file is getting imported twice. It has some
> non-idempotent code in it, and we blow up on the second import.
>
> I thought modules could not get imported twice. The first time they get
> imported, they're cached, and the second import just gets you a reference to the
> original. Playing around, however, I see that it's possible to import a module
> twice if you refer to it by different names. Here's a small-ish test case which
> demonstrates what I'm talking about (python 2.6.5):
>
> In directory /home/roy/play/import/foo, I've got:
>
> __init__.py (empty file)
> try.py
> broken.py
>
>
> $ cat broken.py
> print __file__
>
>
> $ cat try.py
> import broken
> import foo.broken
>
> import sys
> for m in sys.modules.items():
> if m[0].endswith('broken'):
> print m
>
>
> And when I run try.py (with foo as the current directory):
>
> $ PYTHONPATH=/home/roy/play/import python try.py
> /home/roy/play/import/foo/broken.pyc
> /home/roy/play/import/foo/broken.pyc
> ('broken', <module 'broken' from '/home/roy/play/import/foo/broken.pyc'>)
> ('foo.broken', <module 'foo.broken' from '/home/roy/play/import/foo/broken.pyc'>)
>
>
> So, it appears that you *can* import a module twice, if you refer to it by
> different names! This is surprising. It means that having non-idempotent code
> which is executed at import time is a Bad Thing.
>
> It also means that you could have multiple copies of a module's global
> namespace, depending on how your users imported the module. Which is kind of
> mind-blowing.
>
Maybe not directly applicable to what you're saying, but Brett Cannon
ought to know something about the import mechanism. I believe he's been
working on it on and off for several years. See
http://docs.python.org/dev/whatsnew/3.3.html for a starter on the gory
details.
--
Cheers.
Mark Lawrence.
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