Working with a module name conflict

Question

Sometimes module name conflicts occur between the application and the internal file in a third-party package. For example, a file named profile.py in the current folder will crash the jupyter notebook because it is trying to import it instead of its own profile.py . What is a good way to avoid this problem from the perspective of the package user? (Or is this something the package developer should somehow prevent?)

Note. While a similar problem occurs due to a collision between the application and the built-in names (e.g. time.py or socket.py ), it is at least relatively easy to remember the names of standard library modules and other built-in names in objects.

Answer 1

The current directory is the directory that contains the main application script. If you want to avoid name collisions in this directory, do not put any modules in it.

Use a namespace instead. Create a package with a unique name in the main script directory and import all of this. The main script should be very simple and contain nothing more:

 if __name__ == '__main__': from mypackage import myapp myapp.run() 

All modules within the package must also use from import to access other modules within the package. For example, myapp.py may contain:

 from mypackage import profile