Modular Programming with Python

Controlling what gets imported

When you import a module or package, or when you use a wildcard import such as from my_module import *, the Python interpreter loads the contents of the given module or package into your global namespace. If you are importing from a module, all of the top-level functions, constants, classes, and other definitions will be imported. When importing from a package, all of the top-level functions, constants, and so on defined in the package's __init__.py file will be imported.

By default, these imports load everything from the given module or package. The only exception is that a wildcard import will automatically skip any function, constant, class, or other definition starting with an underscore—this has the effect of ...