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

Paul Moore pf_moore at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Dec 22 15:08:54 EST 2003

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

I don't either, although my biggest problem with it is that it isn't clear just by looking what the punctuation actually means. I just fear this will be a permanent head scratcher. This argument by itself has very little value. The question isn't whether it's self-describing (very few features beyond decimal integers are); the question is whether it's easy to remember. There are two subclasses of that: easy to remember what it means when you next see it, and easy to remember how to spell it when you next need it. IMO the dot syntax does fine here.

The biggest "clarity" issue I have with the dot notation is that there's no obvious keyword to look up when you want to find out what's going on. The best you could do is look up the "import" section of the manual. Heaven help you if you want to use Google. (Has anyone tried to get any meaningful information from Google on Microsoft's two technologies, COM and .NET? You'd almost think they'd done it deliberately...

Seriously, the "what do I search for?" factor bugs me every time I hit it.

Paul.

This signature intentionally left blank

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list