[Python-Dev] Relative import (original) (raw)

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Wed Dec 17 21:33:43 EST 2003

On Tue, 2003-12-16 at 13:26, Guido van Rossum wrote:

A lot people have presented a good case for relative imports. Nobody has argued to keep the status quo (where imports are ambiguous about whether they are meant to be absolute or relative). So I suggest that in 2.4, we introduce the leading dot notation for relative import, while still allowing relative import without a leading dot. In 2.5 we can start warning about relative import without a leading dot (although that will undoubtedly get complaints from folks who have code that needs to work with 2.3 still). In 3.0 we can retire ambiguous import.

I'll just note that where the current status quo trips /me/ up most is when I accidentally have a local module with the same name as a global module, and then I write an import statement expecting to get the standard library module, but end up getting the local module.

That's why when I tend to think about this, I start wanting a way to spell "definitely give me the global one, no matter what". IOW, I feel like I want a way to bypass relative module lookups.

I'm still catching up on this thread, but I wanted to throw this out there...

-Barry

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