On 11/12/11 05:56, candide wrote:
First, could you confirm the following syntax
import foo as f
equivalent to
import foo
f = foo
and the issuing "del foo"
Now, I was wondering about the usefulness in everyday programming of the
as syntax within an import statement. Here are some instances retrieved
from real code of such a syntax
import numpy as np
import math as _math
import pickle as pickle
-- In the last case, I can see no point
Without context, I'm guessing the last one is merely keeping
parity in a block that reads:
try:
import cPickle as pickle
except ImportError:
import pickle as pickle
So what is the pragmatics of the as syntax ?
The most common use-case I see is your first: to shorten a
frequently-used namespace. I do this frequently with
import Tkinter as tk
which makes it obvious where things are coming from. I hate
trying to track down variable-names if one did something like
from Tkinter import *
The second big use case I see regularly is the full example
(above): try to import a faster/native module that shares an
interface with a pure-python implementation. However in the
above, the "import pickle as pickle" is a uselessly redundant.
-tkc
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list