[Python-Dev] Relative import

[Jack Diederich]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 02:16:45PM +1100, Andrew Bennetts wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 10:08:21PM -0500, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 22:04, Andrew Bennetts wrote:
> > > On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 09:33:43PM -0500, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > That's why when I tend to think about this, I start wanting a way to
> > > > spell "definitely give me the global one, no matter what".  IOW, I feel
> > > > like I want a way to bypass relative module lookups.
> > > 
> > > Alternatively, maybe what you want is a way to say "definitely give me the
> > > standard library one, no matter what", e.g.
> > > 
> > >     from stdlib import codecs
> > 
> > Interesting.  I see the subtle distinction.  One searches only the
> > standard library, the other searches every directory on sys.path.  I'm
> > not sure I'd have much need to restrict the search to just the standard
> > library.  Plus, would that include site-packages?
> 
> I should have been clearer.  What I'm basically proposing is to make
> site-package called "stdlib", leaving a default python install with a very
> uncluttered top-level namespace, thus reducing unexpected name conflicts.

I'm at least a little confused with what people want, as far as I can tell
import semantics have three things
 * what module to import
 * what name to give that import
 * where to look for it

The 'from' keyword seems to be getting overloaded to mean both what module and
where to find it, which the 'stdlib' tries to resolve.  Most of the
discussion has been about how to improve 'where to look'

I like syntax that reads most important left-to-right, so what about
from MODULE import NAMES as RENAME searching HOW
or
import NAMES as RENAME from MODULE searching HOW

searching could be 'asbolute' 'relative' or any of the other suggested
words.  If you wanted to get fancy it could be a list, if it isn't a list
people who truly care could cascade try/except on ImportError.

-jackdied

ps, I like the second version better but it is less like the current version,
which is a drawback.