Re: [Visualpython-users] Let's hash out the documentation for restrictive imports

[C A. R. <an...@ex...>]

On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Bruce Sherwood <bas...@nc...> wrote:
> Maybe I'm using the word "relative" incorrectly. I'll try to be more clear:
>
> Suppose in the site-packages/visual folder the file __init__.py has
> "from visual.ui import display". That's clearly an absolute import;
> the full path visual.ui is given.
>
> In the past, you could instead say "from ui import display", and this
> was called a "relative" import. It had the problem of ambiguity with
> some possible module named ui, outside the visual module, and so this
> form was deprecated (and I think maybe it won't even work in Python
> 3).
>
> Though I only became aware of this recently, since at least Python 2.6
> you can say "from .ui import display", where the dot makes this an
> absolute import, with the dot standing for "visual.". In this
> conversation I incorrectly called the dot form a "relative" import,
> because it is relative to the current directory. But it is really an
> absolute import, one that has the advantage that changing the name of
> the surrounding directory doesn't require any changes to the files.

No, you are using it correctly:

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0328/#guido-s-decision

The syntax was introduced to remove the ambiguity, because the old
form was being removed at the same time.  It's still a relative
import, since the meaning of the import can change as folders are
shuffled around.

C Anthony