[Tutor] question about import statement

[Greg Bair]

On 08/26/2010 10:29 PM, Hugo Arts wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 9:16 PM, Bill Allen <wallenpb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I did try that and of course it gave an error because it was necessary.  I
>> just did not know why.   However, I later found an explanation on the web.
>> Here it is:
>>
>> from tkinter import *
>> from tkinter import ttk
>>
>> These two lines tell Python that our program needs two modules. The first,
>> "tkinter", is the standard binding to Tk, which when loaded also causes the
>> existing Tk library on your system to be loaded. The second, "ttk", is
>> Python's binding to the newer "themed widgets" that were added to Tk in 8.5.
>>
> 
> yeah, "from package import *" doesn't actually import every name from
> a module. For example, by default, names starting with an underscore
> are not imported. Alternatively, if you have a variable named __all__
> in your module, and it's a list of names, only those names in the list
> actually get imported when you do a "from x import *"
> 
> Hugo
Why would the person who wrote this package choose to do it this way,
though?  If it was something that people would use and not just an
internal name, why hide it this way?

Greg