Maintainability (was Re: Stackless & String-processing)

[Blake Winton]

On Fri, 23 Jul 1999, Ivan Van Laningham <ivanlan at callware.com> wrote:
>"Fred L. Drake" wrote:
>>         import Tkinter as Tk
>>         from module import function as func
>Now, this I like.  I haven't seen this proposal before (or maybe I have
>and senility is setting in), but you can now count me in as a proud
>supporter of this idea.

I seem to remember this idea from a few months ago (I checked deja, but
couldn't find it).  I also seem to remember Tim or Guido convincing me
that it wasn't really necessary, and things could be done almost as well
another way.  Or perhaps I'm just getting old and set in my ways.  ;)

>Any reason it couldn't be done?  What bad things would happen if this
>were implemented and "from spam import *" went away?

Well, billions of Tkinter programs would break...

(Speaking of which, other weirdness just happened...
>>> import urllib
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/opt/lib/python1.5/urllib.py", line 25, in ?
    import socket
ImportError: No module named socket
>>> print sys.path
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
NameError: sys
>>> import sys
>>> print sys.path
['', '/opt/lib/python1.5/', '/opt/lib/python1.5/test',
'/opt/lib/python1.5/plat-linux-i386', '/opt/lib/python1.5/lib-tk',
'/opt/lib/python1.5/lib-dynload']
>>> import urllib
>>>

Funky, eh?)

Later,
Blake.

-- 
One Will.  One Dream.  One Truth.  One Destiny.  One Love.