Two import questions in Python 3.0

[Kay Schluehr]

1. I'd expected that absolute imports are used in Python 3.0 by
default. I may be wrong. I've written two versions of a module
sucks.py

sucks.py
-------------
print ("import from lib.sucks")

sucks.py
-------------
print ("import from package.sucks")

The first is placed in the lib directory that is globally visible by
means of PYTHONPATH. The second one is placed in a package

package/
     __init__.py
     sucks.py
     A.py

The package also contains a module A.py defined by

A.py
------
import sucks

Running A yields "import from package.sucks" which means unconditional
relative import. It shadows the globally visible sucks.py module. I've
expected it the other way round.

2. This is kind of a change request.

In a former life I used to call test-scripts as test-scripts. The dumb
idea was to point e.g. to
lib/tests and run

    python test_ast.py
    test_nodeclasses (__main__.AST_Tests) ... ok
    ....
    test_parse (__main__.ASTHelpers_Test) ... ok

 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ran 12 tests in 0.219s

    OK

The new style is implemented rather in lib2to3. If I point to lib/
lib2to3/tests and run

    python test_parser.py
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "test_parser.py", line 12, in <module>
       from . import support
    ValueError: Attempted relative import in non-package

The standard error of the years to come that makes working with Python
harder and reminds me that it is not a scripting language anymore
because you can't run anything as a script not even a test.

For pedagogical reasons the behavior of test_ast.py and other standard
library tests shall show uniform behavior when called from the command
line i.e. they shall all fail with this import error message. What do
you think?