The following function emulates what was the standard import statement
up to Python 1.4 (no hierarchical module names). (This
implementation wouldn't work in that version, since
find_module() has been extended and
load_module() has been added in 1.4.)
import imp
import sys
def __import__(name, globals=None, locals=None, fromlist=None):
# Fast path: see if the module has already been imported.
try:
return sys.modules[name]
except KeyError:
pass
# If any of the following calls raises an exception,
# there's a problem we can't handle -- let the caller handle it.
fp, pathname, description = imp.find_module(name)
try:
return imp.load_module(name, fp, pathname, description)
finally:
# Since we may exit via an exception, close fp explicitly.
if fp:
fp.close()
A more complete example that implements hierarchical module names and
includes a reload() function can be
found in the module knee. The
knee module can be found in Demo/imputil/ in the
Python source distribution.
