Do I have to take out all the spaces in the file name to import it, or is there some way of telling import that there are spaces?
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4 Answers
You should take the spaces out of the filename. Because the filename is used as the identifier for imported modules (i.e. foo.py will be imported as foo) and Python identifiers can't have spaces, this isn't supported by the import statement.
If you really need to do this for some reason, you can use the __import__ function:
foo_bar = __import__("foo bar")
This will import foo bar.py as foo_bar. This behaves a little bit different than the import statement and you should avoid it.
1 Comment
Laszlo
And you can do something like this too (if you module name that begins with number for example):
solution1 = __import__( "foo bar", fromlist="ClassOrMethodName")If you want to do something like from foo_bar import * (but with a space instead of an underscore), you can use execfile (docs here):
execfile("foo bar.py")
though it's better practice to avoid spaces in source file names.
3 Comments
LHeng
Just to add, in Python 3 it would be
exec(open("foo bar.py", "r").read())
Camion
This won't create a namespace for the module
Tobias Bergkvist
from foo_bar import * likely doesn't behave the same as execfile("foo_bar") if foo_bar sets __all__ = [...] (which controls what is exported when using from the *-importYou can also use importlib.import_module function, which is a wrapper around __import__.
foo_bar_mod = importlib.import_module("foo bar")
or
foo_bar_mod = importlib.import_module("path.to.foo bar")
3 Comments
Karl Knechtel
This is the correct approach in modern Python, assuming that it is correct to use the normal Python machinery to find the module.
Ooker
what is the difference between this and
__import__()?Karl Knechtel
@Ooker It has a less obnoxious interface and offers access to various hooks into the import process. The linked documentation explains in detail.
Just to add to Banks' answer, if you are importing another file that you haven't saved in one of the directories Python checks for importing directories, you need to add the directory to your path with
import sys
sys.path.append("absolute/filepath/of/parent/directory/of/foo/bar")
before calling
foo_bar = __import__("foo bar")
or
foo_bar = importlib.import_module("foo bar")
This is something you don't have to do if you were importing it with import <module>, where Python will check the current directory for the module. If you are importing a module from the same directory, for example, use
import os,sys
sys.path.append(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
foo_bar = __import__('foo_bar')
Hope this saves someone else trying to import their own weirdly named file or a Python file they downloaded manually some time :)
