Issue #24029: Document the name binding behavior for submodule imports.

This commit is contained in:
Barry Warsaw 2015-04-22 18:36:44 -04:00
commit 4e1f355c0e
2 changed files with 40 additions and 0 deletions

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@ -461,6 +461,41 @@ import machinery will create the new module itself.
into :data:`sys.modules`, but it must remove **only** the failing
module, and only if the loader itself has loaded it explicitly.
Submodules
----------
When a submodule is loaded using any mechanism (e.g. ``importlib`` APIs, the
``import`` or ``import-from`` statements, or built-in ``__import__()``) a
binding is placed in the parent module's namespace to the submodule object.
For example, if package ``spam`` has a submodule ``foo``, after importing
``spam.foo``, ``spam`` will have an attribute ``foo`` which is bound to the
submodule. Let's say you have the following directory structure::
spam/
__init__.py
foo.py
bar.py
and ``spam/__init__.py`` has the following lines in it::
from .foo import Foo
from .bar import Bar
then executing the following puts a name binding to ``foo`` and ``bar`` in the
``spam`` module::
>>> import spam
>>> spam.foo
<module 'spam.foo' from '/tmp/imports/spam/foo.py'>
>>> spam.bar
<module 'spam.bar' from '/tmp/imports/spam/bar.py'>
Given Python's familiar name binding rules this might seem surprising, but
it's actually a fundamental feature of the import system. The invariant
holding is that if you have ``sys.modules['spam']`` and
``sys.modules['spam.foo']`` (as you would after the above import), the latter
must appear as the ``foo`` attribute of the former.
Module spec
-----------

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@ -220,6 +220,11 @@ C API
- Issue #23998: PyImport_ReInitLock() now checks for lock allocation error
Documentation
-------------
- Issue #24029: Document the name binding behavior for submodule imports.
What's New in Python 3.4.3?
===========================