Essentially, I'm wondering if it's possible to do something like from .my_script import None in my package's __init__.py to execute my_script.py without introducing undesired variables into the namespace. I know you can do from . import my_script; del my_script - I thought it was possible there was a shortcut for this.
Is it possible to import a Python module exclusively for its effect?
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1 Answers
Consider Local import statements.
You could do the import foo inside a function, which means it will not clutter the global namespace. However, there is an option that does not require a function def:
import foois roughly equivalent to this statement:foo = __import__('foo', globals(), locals(), [], -1)That is, it creates a variable in the current scope with the same name as the requested module, and assigns it the result of calling
__import__()with that module name and a boatload of default arguments.
However, specifying that -1 there seems to no longer be supported in python3. According to the docs, the level indicates
0means only perform absolute imports. Positive values for level indicate the number of parent directories to search relative to the directory of the module calling__import__().
So we will have to go with 0... or if it needs to search in a parent directory, a corresponding positive number.
As an example, I have two files in the same folder.
foo.py
print("Foo loaded")
bar.py
print("Hello")
__import__('foo', globals(), locals(), [], 0)
print("World")
output
> python bar.py
Hello
Foo loaded
World
If you want this to be a shortcut because you do this often, you could define your own, easier to use, function that takes the module name and internally just does this.
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