This is a simplified interface to PyImport_ImportModuleEx() below, leaving the globals and locals arguments set to NULL and level set to 0. When the name argument contains a dot (when it specifies a submodule of a package), the fromlist argument is set to the list ['*'] so that the return value is the named module rather than the top-level package containing it as would otherwise be the case. (Unfortunately, this has an additional side effect when name in fact specifies a subpackage instead of a submodule: the submodules specified in the package’s __all__ variable are loaded.) Return a new reference to the imported module, or NULL with an exception set on failure. A failing import of a module doesn’t leave the module in sys.modules.
This function always uses absolute imports.
Import a module. This is best described by referring to the built-in Python function __import__(), as the standard __import__() function calls this function directly.
The return value is a new reference to the imported module or top-level package, or NULL with an exception set on failure. Like for __import__(), the return value when a submodule of a package was requested is normally the top-level package, unless a non-empty fromlist was given.
Failing imports remove incomplete module objects, like with PyImport_ImportModule().
Import a module. This is best described by referring to the built-in Python function __import__(), as the standard __import__() function calls this function directly.
The return value is a new reference to the imported module or top-level package, or NULL with an exception set on failure. Like for __import__(), the return value when a submodule of a package was requested is normally the top-level package, unless a non-empty fromlist was given.
This is a higher-level interface that calls the current “import hook function” (with an explicit level of 0, meaning absolute import). It invokes the __import__() function from the __builtins__ of the current globals. This means that the import is done using whatever import hooks are installed in the current environment.
This function always uses absolute imports.
Reload a module. Return a new reference to the reloaded module, or NULL with an exception set on failure (the module still exists in this case).
Return the module object corresponding to a module name. The name argument may be of the form package.module. First check the modules dictionary if there’s one there, and if not, create a new one and insert it in the modules dictionary. Return NULL with an exception set on failure.
Note
This function does not load or import the module; if the module wasn’t already loaded, you will get an empty module object. Use PyImport_ImportModule() or one of its variants to import a module. Package structures implied by a dotted name for name are not created if not already present.
Given a module name (possibly of the form package.module) and a code object read from a Python bytecode file or obtained from the built-in function compile(), load the module. Return a new reference to the module object, or NULL with an exception set if an error occurred. name is removed from sys.modules in error cases, even if name was already in sys.modules on entry to PyImport_ExecCodeModule(). Leaving incompletely initialized modules in sys.modules is dangerous, as imports of such modules have no way to know that the module object is an unknown (and probably damaged with respect to the module author’s intents) state.
This function will reload the module if it was already imported. See PyImport_ReloadModule() for the intended way to reload a module.
If name points to a dotted name of the form package.module, any package structures not already created will still not be created.
Return the dictionary used for the module administration (a.k.a. sys.modules). Note that this is a per-interpreter variable.
This is the structure type definition for frozen module descriptors, as generated by the freeze utility (see Tools/freeze/ in the Python source distribution). Its definition, found in Include/import.h, is:
struct _frozen {
char *name;
unsigned char *code;
int size;
};
Structure describing a single entry in the list of built-in modules. Each of these structures gives the name and initialization function for a module built into the interpreter. Programs which embed Python may use an array of these structures in conjunction with PyImport_ExtendInittab() to provide additional built-in modules. The structure is defined in Include/import.h as:
struct _inittab {
char *name;
PyObject* (*initfunc)(void);
};