Proposal: Inline Import

[Kent Johnson]

Shane Hathaway wrote:
> Mike Meyer wrote:
> 
>> Shane Hathaway <shane at hathawaymix.org> writes:
>>
>>> That syntax is verbose and avoided by most coders because of the speed
>>> penalty.
>>
>> What speed penalty? "import re" is a cheap operation, every time but
>> the first one in a program.
> 
> I'm talking about using imports *everywhere*.  The penalty would be 
> appreciable.

Have you tried it?

D:\Projects\CB>python -m timeit -s "import re" "import re"
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.36 usec per loop

You need a lot of imports before 1 usec becomes "appreciable". And your 
proposal is doing the import anyway, just under the hood. How will you 
avoid the same penalty?

Kent