[Ka-Ping] > > What are 'distutils.sys', 'distutils.os', 'distutils.string', > 'distutils.re', 'distutils.distutils' doing in there? (The > sys.modules dictionary maps all these keys to None.) Relative imports come first. Their failure is recorded so the next module in the package importing the same name doesn't go hunting for it on disk all over again. - Gordon