Learning Python

Summary

We’ve learned all about modules in this chapter—how to write them and how to use them. Along the way we explored namespaces and qualification, saw how to reload modules to change running programs, peeked at a few module design issues, and studied the module-related statements and functions listed in Table 5.1. In the next chapter, we’re going to move on to study Python classes. As we’ll see, classes are cousins to modules; they define namespaces too, but add support for making multiple copies, specialization by inheritance, and more.

Table 5-1. Module Operations

Operation	Interpretation
import mod	Fetch a module as a whole
from mod import name	Fetch a specific name from a module
from mod import*	Fetch all top-level names from a module
reload(mod)	Force a reload of a loaded module’s code