Basic import Questions (with bonus profiling question)

[Fredrik Lundh]

Gregory Piñero wrote:

> 1. Will "from somemodule import onething" take as long to start up as
> import somemodule?

yes; "from x import y" does an ordinary import of "x" under the hood.

> 2. Is there anyway I can get at onething more quickly?

not really, unless you're willing/able to refactor the module you're 
importing.

> 3. If I put an import statement hidden away in some function, will
> Python only do the import when that function is called?

correct.  "import" is an executable statement.

> If I say, never use that function would that import statement affect
 > performance at all?

nope.

> Ultimately I have IIS running python as a CGI script and it seems to
> just be taking many seconds to load a small page.  I'm guessing the
> issue is starting up the interpreter and loading all the modules.

several seconds?  sounds bad.  what does the following script print on 
your machine?

	import time, subprocess, sys

	t0 = time.time()
	for i in range(10):
	    subprocess.call([sys.executable, "-c", "pass"])
	print time.time() - t0

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