Why does an imported function “as” another name keep its original __name__?

Question

Here:

from os.path import exists as foo
print foo.__name__

we get: \'exists\'. Why not \'foo\'? Which attribute would

Answer 1

Importing an object just binds a new variable, and all that adding as newname does is let you pick an alternative name to use for the variable in the current namespace.

The __name__ attribute on an object says nothing about the name it is currently bound to, you can have any number of variables as well as containers such as lists or dictionaries pointing to the same object, after all:

def foo(): pass

bar = foo
spam = foo
list_of_functions = [foo]
dictionary_of_functions = {'monty': foo, 'python': foo}

The above created 4 additional references to the function object; you can't have foo.__name__ reflect all of those, and the references in list_of_functions and dictionary_of_functions do not (directly) have names.

Since import foo, import bar as foo, from module import foo and from module import bar as foo all just set the name foo in the current module, they are treated the exact same way as other assignments. You could import the function more than once, under different names, too.

Instead, the __name__ value of a function is set to name it was defined with in the def (...): statement. It is a debugging aid, at most. It is used in tracebacks, for example, to make it easier to identify lines of code shown in the traceback. You'd only set the __name__ to something else if that would help identify the location better. (Note: in Python 3, there is also the __qualname_ attribute, which is used instead of __name__ as it includes more information on where the function is defined when nested or defined on a class).