Proposal for a modified import mechanism.

[Frederic Giacometti]

>
> I'd like to ask the Python developers if they'd consider
>
>     (a) changing the way the current import works to do what I
>     proposed, or,
>
>     (b) add a new keyword like 'rimport' (or something) that does this
>     recursive search through parent packages and loads modules.  This
>     was actually suggested by Gordon McMillan.  Gordon actually
>     suggested something stronger -- import only supports absolute
>     names, rimport is relative import and rrimport is a recursive
>     relative import.  But this would break the current import since
>     import currently aupports some relative lookup.  So maybe import
>     and rimport is a workable solution?

I'd rather introduce a __parent__ module attribute (in addition to the
existing __name__) so that, for instance, the following would do your job:

from __parent__.__parent__.toto import something

In its spirit, this is similar to the '..' of the file systems.

For top-level modules, __parent__ would be None.

I'm personnally against anything that enlarges the search path uselessly;
because the obvious reason of increased name space collision, increased
run-time overhead etc...

Frederic Giacometti