"import foo" and "from foo import bar"

[Justin Sheehy]

jajs at NOSPAMretemail.es (Juanjo Álvarez) writes:

> It's better to write the "from string import join" form or it's exactly
> the same (in memory use and performance) that "import string"?

There is a small performance benefit to the 'from' approach, but I
usually find that it is outweighed by the fact that it is much easier
to read and understand the code later if you don't do that.

The only time that I would recommend doing that sort of thing (other
than in modules that explicitly suggest that you do so) is if you are
going to reference that name _many_ times, such as inside a huge for-loop.

In that case, it may be worth it to get it into a local variable first.

-Justin