importing down in code rather than at top of file.
Chris Angelico
rosuav at gmail.com
Mon Aug 29 14:15:05 EDT 2016
On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 3:57 AM, Tobiah <toby at tobiah.org> wrote:
> Is it worth while to defer the import of a large module that seldom
> gets used in the script?
>
>
> import sys
> import os
>
> if hardly_ever_happens():
>
> import large_module
> large_module.do_task()
>
>
>
> I imagine it takes a certain amount of processing
> power and memory to import a module, so it seems
> like I'd save those resources with the above pattern.
>
> The down side would be that it's nice to see all of the
> imports at the top which would follow convention. Should
> I care?
Don't imagine; test. Time your program with and without a top-of-file
import. If the module really is large (and by "large" I mean on the
scale of numpy - huge stuff), then yes, it's worth it. If you can't
measure the difference, though, don't bother - just import it and have
done with it.
ChrisA
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