David Abrahams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I'm pretty comfortable with Python, but recently I'm constantly > finding mysterious issues with import. For example, looking at > > http://genshi.edgewall.org/browser/trunk/genshi/filters/transform.py > > the examples use the symbol 'HTML' but it's not defined locally, it's > not explicitly imported, and there's no import *. Yet doctest will > test this module and it passes with flying colors. It turns out HTML > is defined in genshi.input. How do I know that? I grepped for it. > How does it become available to this module?
That's a mystery to me too. I can't see by looking at the module where this 'HTML' name comes from, and as you say there is no import of 'genshi.input'. Whatever the explanation, it's a violation of one of the strengths of Python: namespaces. Names that appear in the current namespace (as happens with 'from foo import *', and as seems to be happening here) are bad programming style, for exactly the reason that they make the code more difficult to understand. -- \ "bash awk grep perl sed, df du, du-du du-du, vi troff su fsck | `\ rm * halt LART LART LART!" -- The Swedish BOFH, | _o__) alt.sysadmin.recovery | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
