conflict between my package and os standard module

[Ben Wittner]

I'm looking for help.

I have a bunch of extensions to standard modules that are pretty
specific to the needs of my project.

I chose to create a package for my project, let's call it my_proj.

In there, I chose to create modules corresponding to standard
modules (e.g., my_proj.os, my_proj.re) to hold the project-specific
extensions of the standard modules.

I put the directory containing my_proj on my PYTHONPATH,
but I did NOT put my_proj on my PYTHONPATH.

In my_proj/os.py I put the following line:

import os

Since my_proj is NOT on my PYTHONPATH, I thought that the line above
would cause the standard module os to be imported.
Instead, it seems that my_proj/os.py is imported.
(I seems that because
    (a) I get an attribute error for "path"
         when I use os.path.isdir() in my_proj/os.py and
    (b) when I print dir(os) I see my_proj.os stuff instead of standard
          module os stuff).

I tried taking '' off sys.path, before importing os, but that did not help.

Of course, I could rename my extension modules to things like
os_x.py and re_x.py, but it seems like that should be unecessary
since I'm already indicating that it's part of my project related package
by prepending with "my_proj.".

Any ideas before I rename all my extension packages and change all
references to them?

Thanks.

-Ben

benwittner at yahoo.com