On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 3:57 AM, Tobiah <t...@tobiah.org> wrote: > Is it worth while to defer the import of a large module that seldom > gets used in the script? > > > import sys > import os > > if hardly_ever_happens(): > > import large_module > large_module.do_task() > > > > I imagine it takes a certain amount of processing > power and memory to import a module, so it seems > like I'd save those resources with the above pattern. > > The down side would be that it's nice to see all of the > imports at the top which would follow convention. Should > I care?
Don't imagine; test. Time your program with and without a top-of-file import. If the module really is large (and by "large" I mean on the scale of numpy - huge stuff), then yes, it's worth it. If you can't measure the difference, though, don't bother - just import it and have done with it. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list