Question

Does this:

import foo as bar

do the same thing as this?

bar = __import__('foo')

Is there ever a reason to use the latter one?

I’m reading through someone elses code, I found the latter one and am not sure why they didn’t use the prior syntax

Answer 1

Direct use of __import__() is rare, except in cases where you want to import a module whose name is only known at runtime.

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