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From: Devin Jeanpierre <jeanpierreda@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 20:06:42 -0800
Subject: Re: Importing by file name
To: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:60349

On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:
> As part of a post on python-ideas, I wanted to knock together a quick
> little script that "imports" a file based on its name, in the same way
> that the Python interpreter will happily take an absolute pathname for
> the main script. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but I don't know
> how. Obviously the import statement can't do it, but I've been poking
> around with __import__ and importlib without success. (Experiments are
> being done on Python 3.3; if a different version would make the job
> easier I'm happy to switch. This is just a curiosity tinkering.)

The easiest way is probably to modify what directories python searches
- sys.path:

import os
import sys

def file_import(path):
    dname, fname = os.path.split(path)
    modname, _ext = os.path.splitext(fname)
    sys.path.insert(0, dname)
    try:
        return __import__(modname)
    finally:
        del sys.path[0]

-- Devin