[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 328 -- relative and multi-line import (original) (raw)

Neil Schemenauer nas-python at python.ca
Mon Apr 5 13:51:17 EDT 2004

On Mon, Apr 05, 2004 at 01:36:24PM -0400, Aahz wrote:

Your intuition is wrong. From package's init.py, from . refers to package's parent; to get back into the package, you need to use from .package.

That's confusing. I expected '.' to refer to the current package, just as '.' refers to the current directory in most file systems. I think that meaning would be more useful in practice as well. Imagine a package where '.' means the current package:

# __init__.py ###################################
from .a import A
from .b import B
#################################################


# a.py ##########################################
from .utils import x, y

class A:
    ...
#################################################


# b.py ##########################################
from .utils import x, z

class B:
    ...
#################################################

# utils.py ######################################
def x():
    ...
def y():
    ...
def z():
    ...
#################################################

Notice that the modules that make up the package do not need to know what the package is called. That was one of the major benefits of relative imports that I was looking forward to.

Perhaps I misunderstand the PEP.

Neil

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