[python-committers] do we still believe explicit relative imports are bad as PEP 8 claims?

[Fred Drake]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 3:36 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> It says they are "highly discouraged" because "absolute imports are
> more portable and usually more readable", but now that people have had
> a chance to use explicit relative imports, do people still believe
> this? I mean if we truly believed this then why did we add the syntax?
> I know I have used it and love it, let alone that I don't buy the
> portability argument.

I suspect the portability argument is about cross-Python-version
compatibility, rather than across operating systems.  Maybe we don't
care about that any more since 2.4 and earlier don't exist in the eyes
of python-dev.

On the other hand, I've never used them, or stumbled over code that
does, so I won't speak to the readability issue.  I have an opinion,
but no practical experience with explicit relative imports.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.    <fdrake at acm.org>
"A storm broke loose in my mind."  --Albert Einstein