Proposal: Inline Import

[Shane Hathaway]

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.

>>What's really got me down is the level of effort required to move code
>>between modules.  After I cut 100 lines from a 500 line module and
>>paste them to a different 500 line module, I have to examine every
>>import in both modules as well as examine the code I moved for missing
>>imports.
> 
> 
> Has it ever occured to you that if you're cutting and pasting 500 line
> blocks, you're doing something fundamentally wrong? One of the points
> of modules and OO is that you don't *have* to do things like
> that. Cut-n-paste means you wind up with two copies of the code to
> maintain, so that bug fixes in one will have to be propogated to the
> other "by hand". Rather than spend time fixing what you broke by
> yanking the code out of it's context, you'd be better off refactoring
> the code so you could use it in context. That'll cut down on the
> maintenance in the future, and may well mean that the next time
> someone needs the code, it'll already be properly refactored so they
> can use it directly, without having to cut-n-paste-n-fix it again.

I said cut and paste, not copy and paste.  I'm moving code, not copying 
it.  Your advice is correct but doesn't apply to this problem.

Shane