[Python-Dev] __file__

[Brett Cannon]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 12:46, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Brett Cannon wrote:
> > Actually it's four: name/__init__.py, name/__init__.pyc, name.py, and
> > then name.pyc. And just so people have terminology to go with all of
> > this, this search is what the finder does to say whether it can or
> > cannot handle the requested module.
>
> Huh, I thought we checked for the directory first and only then checked
> for the __init__ module within it (hence the generation of ImportWarning
> when we don't find __init__ after finding a correctly named directory).
> So a normal miss (i.e. no directory) only needs one stat call.
>
> (However, I'll grant that I haven't looked at this particular chunk of
> code in a fairly long time, so I could easily be wrong).
>
> Robert raises a good point about the checks for extension modules as
> well - we should get an accurate count here so Barry's PEP can pitch the
> proportional reduction in stat calls accurately.
>

Here are the details (from Python/import.c:find_module) assuming that
everything has failed to the point of trying for the implicit sys.path
importers:

stat_info = stat(name)
if stat_info.exists and stat_info.is_dir:
  if stat(name/__init__.py) || stat(name/__init__.pyc):
     load(name)
else:
  for ext in ('.so', 'module.so', '.py', 'pyc'):  # Windows has an extra
check for .pyw files.
     if open(name + ext):
        load(name)

So there are a total of five to six depending on the OS (actually, VMS goes
up to eight!) before a search path is considered not to contain a module.

And thanks to doing this I realized importlib is not stat'ing the directory
first which should fail faster than checking for the __init__ files every
time.

-Brett





>
> Cheers,
> Nick.
>
> --
> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
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