On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 6:56 PM, Nick Coghlan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Steven D'Aprano wrote: >> Should this be reported as a documentation bug? Given the new import >> hooks, would it be fair to say that the main reason for __import__ is >> to use it to import a module whose name is only known at runtime? > > Only known at runtime, and for some reason you want an actual module > object rather than just the module's global namespace (since you can use > runpy.run_module() if you only need the latter). > > At the very least, the __import__ docs should probably be updated to > point to run_module() as an alternative approach, so a doc issue is > probably a good idea.
This sounds wrong to me. run_module() runs the module each time it is called. __import__ has all the semantics of the import statement (by definition -- it is almost a tautology :-) in that it first tries to see if the module is already imported. Pointing to run_module() as an alternative just perpetuates the misunderstanding (alas fairly common amongst casual users) about what exactly import does. -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
