Question

I have a legacy python program which defined a module whose name conflict with a system module in the current python, what’s the easiest method to fix this? This module has been imported in many place, so it would be great if no need to change the the old python source.

Answer 1

You could create a custom import routine using the imp module. For example, here I’m importing a module named string which shadows the real string module:

import imp

def user_import(name, path):
    mod_file, mod_path, mod_desc = imp.find_module(name, [path])
    return imp.load_module(name, mod_file, mod_path, mod_desc)

# load the real 'string' module
import string
print string.digits

# load the user 'string' module which lives under the path './foo'
mod = user_import('string', './foo')
print mod.digits

Output:

0123456789
thesearenotdigits