from __future__ import absolute_import ?

[Peter Otten]

Ron Adam wrote:

> 
>     from __future__ import absolute_import
> 
> Is there a way to check if this is working?  I get the same results with
> or without it.
> 
>     Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Sep 19 2006, 09:52:17)
>     [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on win 32

If there are two modules 'foo', one at the toplevel and the other inside a
package 'bar', 

from __future__ import absolute_import
import foo

will import the toplevel module whereas 

import foo

will import bar.foo. A messy demonstration:

$ ls bar
absolute.py  foo.py  __init__.py  relative.py
$ cat bar/absolute.py
from __future__ import absolute_import
import foo
$ cat bar/relative.py
import foo
$ cat foo.py
print "toplevel"
$ cat bar/foo.py
print "in bar"
$ python2.5 -c 'import bar.absolute'
toplevel
$ python2.5 -c 'import bar.relative'
in bar


Another example is here:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-January/422889.html

Peter