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

Aahz aahz at pythoncraft.com
Mon Apr 5 15:01:51 EDT 2004

On Mon, Apr 05, 2004, Neil Schemenauer wrote:

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.

Not sure. The only difference between your semantics and mine lies in init.py; there -- and only there -- is where the need exists to know the package name. You're making the mistake of thinking that init.py exists in the same namespace as a.py, b.py, and utils.py -- it doesn't. Now, we could in theory use your semantics due to "practicality beats purity", but it seems to me that it would lead to more mistakes in understanding how packages work.

Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/

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