'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 believe in newer versions of Python (2.5+? must check my facts...) you can even do:

import some_other_module as some_module

So you could still go with style 1 and swap in a different module later on.

I think it generally maps to how much you want to clutter up your namespace. Will you just be using one or two names in the module? Or all of them (from x import * is not allways bad, just generally)?