Re: [Docutils-users] Import bug in docutils/parsers/rst/state.py

[Guenter M. <mi...@us...>]

On 2013-03-18, Larry Hastings wrote:

> The current version of docutils/parsers/rst/state.py has this code:

>     try:
>          import roman
>     except ImportError:
>          import docutils.utils.roman as roman

> Since there is no "roman.py" in "docutils/parsers/rst", I'm not sure 
> when that bare "import roman" is a good idea.  It actually seems to me 
> like a bad idea, because if you have a "roman.py" in the current 
> directory, it'll find that instead.  (And, if that happens to be a 
> Python 2 file, while you're running Python 3, you get a SyntaxError.)  
> Alternatively, if 'roman' in sys.modules, "import roman" will grab 
> that... whatever it is.

> Surely it would be best to drop the first three lines of this snippet, 
> and always explicitly import docutils.utils.roman as roman.  After all, 
> explicit is better than implicit.

"roman" is a 3rd-party Python module.

The idea with this implementation is to use the upstream module if it is
installed, as it may be a newer version with bugfixes.

As "roman" is not in the standard library, we cannot be sure it's installed,
therefore we include/use a (possibly outdated) copy as fallback.

@David: do you have a preferred strategy regarding "roman"?

Günter