John Salerno wrote: > John Salerno wrote: > > > from time import sleep > ... > > sleep(1.0) > > Very picky point, but I'd like to know what others think of this. Should > I import as above, or should I do this: > > import time > .... > time.sleep(60.0) ??? > > I think the 'from time import sleep' looks cleaner, because I'm only > taking what I need (is an import any more expensive than this from?), > but I also feel like the 'time.sleep' syntax is much more > self-describing and better to read than just 'sleep'. > > So what do you guys think between these two choices?
I used to do both, depending on what was more convenient. These days, as I've been writing larger and more complex programs, I pretty much just import the module. I find that a consistent approach just keeps things easier to digest, gives me less to think about and fewer decisions to make. One can consistently import the module, but not the symbols within because sometimes there's just too many. The exception is I still import global singleton objects using from...import. Such objects behave more like modules in my code anyways, and probably they'd actually be modules if not for the ugliness of using the global statement. Having said all that, I still cringe slightly when writing stuff like glob.glob() and time.time(). (Which brings me to a related piece of advice: a good way to name modules that avoids confusion with other symbols is to use "act of" words, i.e., words that end in ing, ion, age, or ment. I would have named the glob module "globbing", the time module "timing", and so on; then I wouldn't have to cringe.) Carl -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
