Hi, this is my first time here on the mailing list.
I would like to open up for a discussion on how we can introduce a way to hide
imports.
I am proposing the introduction of an optional, non-breaking keyword, private,
to be used when importing a file. The goal is to allow developer to hide
internal dependencies and prevent them from leaking into the module's public
namespace.
Under the current system, any object imported into a module's top-level scope
becomes an accessible attribute of that module.
module/math.py
'''
import numpy as np
def calculate_mean(data: np.ndarray) -> float:
return np.mean(data)
'''
The issue is that when a user imports this module, the import is exposed.
'''
import module.math
# This is valid, even though 'np' is an internal detail:
# module.math.np
'''
While we have some conventions, we do not have explicit hiding of such modules.
We have one solution, which is more like a convention
'''
import numpy as _np
'''
This hides it for common usage and signals to the developer that it is private.
__all__ works for wildcard imports, but not for standard imports.
I suggest adopting a solution similar to what has been implemented in swift,
which is to introduce a modifier keyword:
'''
private import numpy as np
def calculate_mean(data: np.ndarray) -> float:
return np.mean(data)
'''
Internally in the file np is accesible, but when importing the file it is not
accesible.
Expected behaviour:
import module.math
module.math.np
This raises an AttributeError
from module.math import np raises an ImportError
from module.math import calculate_mean Succeeds
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