Eric Snow added the comment:

It looks like there are two concepts at play though:

1. side-effect-free vs. may-have-side-effects
2. just-find-the-spec-dangit vs. 
find-the-spec-relative-to-submodule-search-locations-I-already-know

In the case of #1, providing the path is just a means to an end.  In contrast, 
for #2 providing the path is the whole point and side effects are something to 
which you may not have given any thought (but you probably aren't expecting 
them).

In both cases, it still boils down to (module name -> module spec).  To me, 
handling both with a single function and a keyword-only "path" parameter seems 
sufficient, as long as people don't miss the fact that there are side effects 
in the default case.

The tricky part is that this is not a high-use API, so I'm trying not to think 
in terms of common case.  (I'm tempted to say things like "in the common case 
you just want the spec and you don't care about that other stuff".)

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue19944>
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