'from X import a' versus 'import X; X.a'

Question

I\'ve seen some Python programmers use the following style fairly consistently (we\'ll call it style 1):

import some_module
# Use some_module.some_identifier in          


        

Answer 1

I usually use a threshold to decide this. If I want to use a lot of things within some_module, I'll use:

import some_module as sm
x = sm.whatever

If there's only one or two things I need:

from some_module import whatever
x = whatever

That's assuming I don't need a whatever from some_other_module, of course.

I tend to use the as clause on the imports so that I can reduce my typing and substitue another module quite easily in the future.