[Python-Dev] Syntax suggestion for imports (original) (raw)

Tony Nelson tonynelson at georgeanelson.com
Thu Jan 3 20:20:00 CET 2008

At 3:20 PM +0100 1/3/08, Christian Heimes wrote:

Raymond Hettinger wrote:

How about a new, simpler syntax: ... * import readline or emptymodule The syntax idea has a nice ring to it, except for the last idea. As others have already said, the name emptymodule is too magic. The readline example becomes more readable when you change the import to import readline or None as readline

In my opinion the import or as syntax definition is easy to understand if you force the user to always have an "as" statement. The None name is optional but must be the last name: import name[, or name2[, or name3 ...] [, or None] as target ...

At 11:48 AM -0600 1/3/08, Ron Adam wrote: ...

An alternative possibility might be, rather than "or", reuse "else" before import. ...

I prefer "else" to "or" but with the original single-statement syntax.

If the last clause could be an expression as well as a module name, what I've done (used with and copied from BeautifulSoup):

try:
    from htmlentitydefs import name2codepoint
except ImportError:
    name2codepoint = {}

could become:

from htmlentitydefs else ({}) import name2codepoint as name2codepoint

Also:

import foo or (None) as foo

--

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