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[Python-Dev] If you shadow a module in the standard library that IDLE depends on, bad things happen

R. David Murray rdmurray at bitdance.com
Thu Oct 29 20:06:51 EDT 2015 
On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 16:56:38 -0700, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 1:50 PM, Ryan Gonzalez <rymg19 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why not just check the path of the imported modules and compare it with the
> > Python library directory?
> 
> It works, but it requires that everyone who could run into this
> problem carefully add some extra guard code to every stdlib import
> statement, and in practice nobody will (or at least, not until after
> they've already gotten bitten by this at least once... at which point
> they no longer need it).
> 
> Given that AFAICT there's no reason this couldn't be part of the
> default import system's functionality and "just work" for everyone, if
> I were going to spend time on trying to fix this I'd probably target
> that :-).
> 
> (I guess the trickiest bit would be to find an efficient and
> maintainable way to check whether a given package name is present in
> the stdlib.)

For Idle, though, it sounds like a very viable strategy, and that's
what Laura is concerned about.

--David
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