As far as I understood, from module import * means that everything from the module will be locally available.
In my code I found:
from tkinter import *
and
from tkinter import filedialog
Looking back, I figured I could drop this last line, but then it is unavailable:
NameError: name 'filedialog' is not defined.
What am I missing?
From what I understand, Tkinter is a package (which means that it contains other modules). From Tkinter import * will only give you the default modules.
from the documentation:
6.4.1. Importing * From a Package
Now what happens when the user writes from sound.effects import *? Ideally, one would hope that this somehow goes out to the filesystem, finds which submodules are present in the package, and imports them all. This could take a long time and importing sub-modules might have unwanted side-effects that should only happen when the sub-module is explicitly imported.
The only solution is for the package author to provide an explicit index of the package. The import statement uses the following convention: if a package’s init.py code defines a list named all, it is taken to be the list of module names that should be imported when from package import * is encountered. It is up to the package author to keep this list up-to-date when a new version of the package is released. Package authors may also decide not to support it, if they don’t see a use for importing * from their package. For example, the file sounds/effects/init.py could contain the following code:
Please, read the following post for another answer to your question. filedialog, tkinter and opening files
*import does not import submodule. It simply imports the selected package and puts everything in the global namespace. There is no difference in "things loaded" betweenimport tkinterandfrom tkinter import *, the difference is that the latter will pollute the namespace. If the__init__.pyfile does not import submodules then you must import them explicitly(and this seems the case).