Import module with same package as existing one

Question

I have the following directory structure:

/some/dir
 ┣ mainmodule
 ┃ ┣ __init__.py
 ┃ ┗ module.py
 ┗ submodules
 ┣ __init__.py
 ┗ module
 ┣ __init__.py
 ┣ submodule_1.py
 ┣ ...
 ┗ submodule_n.py

Both /some/dir/mainmodule and /some/dir/submodules are not on pyhton's library path. Being located in directory /some/dir/mainmodule I want to import all modules (module.submodule_1, ..., module.submodule_n) in directory /some/dir/submodules.

I tried the following. But I always get ImportError: No module named submodule_1:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.path.append("/some/dir/submodules")
>>> import module.submodule_1
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named submodule_1
>>>

The problem seems to be that module.py in /some/dir/mainmodule has the same name as the first package of the modules in /some/dir/submodules. Renaiming module.py or the package solves this issues, but as this is some widely used legacy code I'm working on, I don't know if there are undocumented references to these names. Thus I'm looking for a way to solve this without renaming any files.

• Kabali: try this sys.path.append(0, "/some/dir/submodules")

Answer 1

use the following line.

sys.path.insert(0, '/some/dir/submodules')