Why the default sys.path[0] insertion? (It breaks my code.)

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Robb Shecter wrote:
> 1) This behavior is inconsistent:  Programmers cannot use relative 
> package specs in the import statement.  But in this one case, the import 
> statement is being interpreted relatively!

Why do you say this? You surely can use a relative import inside a 
package. In fact, this is what probably causes the problem for you right 
now: You do "import db", and expect this to be "mpm.db", but it happens 
to become "db" because of the sys.path modification.

> 2) I guess that a workaround would be either a) Make a dummy script in 
> the top-level directory that relays the call to the one in the 
> subdirectory, or b) Somehow configure my environment to to 
> sys.path.pop(0).  I'm not sure which solution is cleaner.

Solution a) is the common approach. However, another solution is to 
avoid relative imports: Instead of importing "db", import "mpm.db".
It then won't matter if there is a db package or module on sys.path.

Regards,
Martin