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Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2013 08:27:56 -0800 (PST)
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Subject: Re: Python modules
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On Monday, January 14, 2013 9:04:00 AM UTC-6, Chris Angelico wrote:
> The performance cost of reimporting a module is very low;
> in fact, trying to avoid it by adorning all your usage
> with an extra dot-level will probably cost you a lot more,
> since there'll be an extra lookup every time.

Most people "adorn" a module with an extra dot to:

    1. create a shorter name (f.e.[1] tk instead of Tkinter)
    
    2. keep their namespace clean. 

Only a fool would do "from Tkinter import *"[2]. A wise programmer, who needed to access many members of Tkinter, would do instead "import Tkinter as tk", and then prepend all members with "tk.".

[1] Abbr: (F)or (E)xample. (I feel an EnglishWart brewing on this subject!)
[2] With the exception of command line testing, learning, or playing.