Issue 13047: imp.find_module("") and imp.find_module(".") (original) (raw)

It's undocumented that imp.find_module("") and imp.find_module(".") try to find init.py.

There is also a small difference in behavior between them. sys.path by default contains "" as the first element, which is sufficient for imp.find_module("."), but not for imp.find_module(""):

$ mkdir /tmp/imp_tests $ cd /tmp/imp_tests $ touch init.py $ python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; print(repr(sys.path[0])); print(imp.find_module("."))' '' (None, '.', ('', '', 5)) $ python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; print(repr(sys.path[0])); print(imp.find_module(""))' '' Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in ImportError: No module named ''

If sys.path contains path (e.g. "." or absolute path) to directory with init.py file, then imp.find_module("") will succeed:

$ PYTHONPATH="." python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; print(repr(sys.path[0:2])); print(imp.find_module("."))' ['', '/tmp/imp_tests'] (None, '.', ('', '', 5)) $ PYTHONPATH="." python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; print(repr(sys.path[0:2])); print(imp.find_module(""))' ['', '/tmp/imp_tests'] (None, '/tmp/imp_tests/', ('', '', 5)) $ python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; sys.path.insert(1, "."); print(repr(sys.path[0:2])); print(imp.find_module("."))' ['', '.'] (None, '.', ('', '', 5)) $ python3.3 -c 'import imp, sys; sys.path.insert(1, "."); print(repr(sys.path[0:2])); print(imp.find_module(""))' ['', '.'] (None, './', ('', '', 5))

I think that imp.find_module(".") and imp.find_module("") should have the same behavior, and this behavior should be documented.