[Python-Dev] elementtree in stdlib

Thu Apr 6 21:35:21 CEST 2006

Trent Mick wrote:
> That is the current state.

which reminds that maybe it's time to add an import helper to
the standard library, so you can do
 stringio = import_search("cStringIO", "StringIO")
 ET = import_search("lxml.etree", "cElementTree", "xml.etree.cElementTree")
 db = import_search("superdb", "sqlite3", "fancydb", "dumbdb")
etc. without having to type in
 for mod in ("cStringIO", "StringIO"):
 try:
 m = __import__(mod)
 for p in mod.split(".")[1:]:
 m = getattr(m, p, None)
 if m is None:
 raise ImportError
 return m
 except ImportError:
 pass
 else:
 raise ImportError(mod)
all the time (or create those horridly nested try-except constructs).
or perhaps
 try:
 import cStringIO as stringio
 retry ImportError:
 import StringIO as stringio
 except ImportError:
 print "didn't work!"
would be a solution (sorry, wrong list).
</F>