Relative Imports, why the hell is it so hard?

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:57:12 -0300, Istvan Albert  
<istvan.albert at gmail.com> escribió:
> On Mar 24, 3:16 pm, "Gabriel Genellina" <gagsl-... at yahoo.com.ar>
> wrote:
>
>> Did you know, once a module is imported by the first time
>
> yeah yeah, could we not get sidetracked with details that are not
> relevant? what it obviously means is to import it in all of your
> modules that need to access to relative paths

Uh? You posted a module containing a function and some code that modifies  
sys.path. I imagine you are interested in those side effects in sys.path  
-- which will only happen the first time it is imported. Isn't it relevant?

>> I don't understand, how is this supposed to help relative imports?
>
> That's only because you have not had to deal with the problem that it
> solves.

But I had to deal with the problem that it *creates*, even before relative  
imports existed, and it's a lot worse.

>> Bindly inserting directories into sys.path can easily confuse the  
>> import systemn
>
> confuse the import system? what the heck does that mean? You either
> have a path in the sys.path or not. FWIW it is far cleaner than doing
> a relative import that does not work correctly.

Others have posted the way to execute modules inside a package. For the  
problem of adding random directories to sys.path, see:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/ed47d8e31ca3d411/e22039a2cf166f42?#e22039a2cf166f42

-- 
Gabriel Genellina