use import *

[Lawrence D’Oliveiro]

On Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 3:32:11 AM UTC+12, Ganesh Pal wrote:

> is it a good programming practice to use  import * ?

No. Think of the module you’re importing as a can, and each of the names it defines as a worm. So you when you do “from «module» import *”, it’s like emptying all the worms in the can onto the floor, and letting them crawl all over your program, polluting your global namespace.

Now imagine you change your mind, and want to get all the worms back into the can, because people reading your program (yourself included) cannot be sure where each name is coming from.

Not a pleasant process. So the wise programmer avoids getting into this situation.

Yes, it can be annoying to have to write module names over and over. Python lets you use alternative names, e.g.

    import long_module_name as lmn

then you say “lmn.«name»” instead of “long_module_name.«name»”.