By defining functions you can reuse a block of code several times in a program. But, if you want to reuse these defined functions in another programs, then you need to do something more, need to make a module. A module is a file containig all of your defined functions. The file name of a module should have “.py” extension. A module is imported by another program to make use of its functionality.
Make your first module
You can easily create your own module. So, let’s create our first module-
def sayHello(): print “Hello!This is my first module.” version=’1.0’
Save it as mymodule.py .
As you see, there is nothing special here than a simple python program. Now we will use it in another program.
Import a module
The functionality of a module is used by importing it in another program. There are two ways to import a module-
1.import moduleName
2.from...import
Take a look at the following two examples to clarify the difference between them-
Example:1
import mymodule mymodule.sayHello() print mymodule.version
Example:2
from mymodule import * sayHello() print verion
Both cases results the same output-
Hello!This is my first module.
1.0
Note: from...import statement is used to import functions, variables and classes directly from a module. If you wish to import a specific function/variable then use “from moduleName import functionName”. If you want to import all the functions, variables and classes directly from a module, then use “from moduleName import *”.
The Module Search Path
So far we have seen how to make your own module and how to import it. Now we will learn something about module search path. Module search path simply means which paths are being searched when a module is imported. Let’s go back to our first module named mymodule. When this module is imported, the interpreter searches for a file named mymodule.py in the current directory. Then it searches in the list of directories specified by the environment variable ‘PYTHONPATH’. If environment variable is not set, then interpreter searches in the installation-dependent default path. On windows operating systems, it is generally ‘C:\Python30’ or on linux distributions it is usually ‘/usr/local/bin/python’.
Compiled .pyc files
When a module is imported, that is the corresponding file containing the module is successfully compiled, a compiled version of this file is created with the extension ‘.pyc’. Next time when you import the module, even from a different program, it will be much faster due to this byte compiled file. This byte-compiled files are platform-independent.
A module's __name__
Built-in variable __name__ is set with the start of a program. When the program runs as a
script, __name__ has the value __main__ and the test block is executed. On the other hand, if the module is being imported, the test code is skipped.
Example: Using a module's __name__
if __name__ == '__main__':
print 'This program is running by itself!'
Output:
This program is running by itself!
The dir() function
The dir() function is used to find out which functions, variables and classes are defined. When you supply a module name to the dir() function, it will return the list of the names defined in that module.
When no argument is supplied to it, it returns the list of names defined in the current module. See what happpens when we supply the module name sys to the dir() function-
>>>import sys >>> dir(sys) ['__displayhook__', '__doc__', '__excepthook__', '__name__', '__package__', '__stderr__', '__stdin__', '__stdout__', '_clear_type_cache', '_current_frames', '_getframe', 'api_version', 'argv', 'builtin_module_names', 'byteorder', 'call_tracing', 'callstats', 'copyright', 'displayhook', 'dllhandle', 'dont_write_bytecode', 'exc_info', 'excepthook', 'exec_prefix', 'executable', 'exit', 'flags', 'float_info', 'getcheckinterval', 'getdefaultencoding', 'getfilesystemencoding', 'getprofile', 'getrecursionlimit', 'getrefcount', 'getsizeof', 'gettrace', 'getwindowsversion', 'hexversion', 'intern', 'last_traceback', 'last_type', 'last_value', 'maxsize', 'maxunicode', 'meta_path', 'modules', 'path', 'path_hooks', 'path_importer_cache', 'platform', 'prefix', 'setcheckinterval', 'setfilesystemencoding', 'setprofile', 'setrecursionlimit', 'settrace', 'stderr', 'stdin', 'stdout', 'subversion', 'version', 'version_info', 'warnoptions', 'winver']
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