On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 11:13 AM, Steve D'Aprano <steve+pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > Within a single language, it is common to have both procedural and declarative > statements. E.g. in Python for statements are clearly procedural flow control. > But "import" can be read as a declarative statement: > > "Load this module, I don't care how you do it or where you have to search or > what order you do the searching, so long as you load this module." > > Arguably its not *really* declarative, because we can implicitly control the > search order by manipulating sys.modules and sys.path and a few other ways. > But > that's splitting hairs -- by that standard, SQL SELECT isn't declarative > either, because databases often give you a way to fine-tune the query plan.
One way to figure out whether it's declarative or imperative is to consider whether it would be legal for (a) a different Python implementation, or (b) a different version of the same Python implementation, to achieve the same goal in a different way. An import statement is definitely somewhat declarative, because you can *externally* change the mechanics of the command. (For instance, activating a virtual environment, or otherwise messing with PYTHONPATH.) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
