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Should import statements always be at the top of a module?

Asked 2008-09-24T17:21:47.757
559

PEP 8 states:

Imports are always put at the top of the file, just after any module comments and docstrings, and before module globals and constants.

However if the class/method/function that I am importing is only used in rare cases, surely it is more efficient to do the import when it is needed?

Isn't this:

class SomeClass(object):

    def not_often_called(self)
        from datetime import datetime
        self.datetime = datetime.now()

more efficient than this?

from datetime import datetime

class SomeClass(object):

    def not_often_called(self)
        self.datetime = datetime.now()
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2 Answers

9

Curt makes a good point: the second version is clearer and will fail at load time rather than later, and unexpectedly.

Normally I don't worry about the efficiency of loading modules, since it's (a) pretty fast, and (b) mostly only happens at startup.

If you have to load heavyweight modules at unexpected times, it probably makes more sense to load them dynamically with the __import__ function, and be sure to catch ImportError exceptions, and handle them in a reasonable manner.

answered 2008-09-24T17:32:50.647
6

It's a tradeoff, that only the programmer can decide to make.

Case 1 saves some memory and startup time by not importing the datetime module (and doing whatever initialization it might require) until needed. Note that doing the import 'only when called' also means doing it 'every time when called', so each call after the first one is still incurring the additional overhead of doing the import.

Case 2 save some execution time and latency by importing datetime beforehand so that not_often_called() will return more quickly when it is called, and also by not incurring the overhead of an import on every call.

Besides efficiency, it's easier to see module dependencies up front if the import statements are ... up front. Hiding them down in the code can make it more difficult to easily find what modules something depends on.

Personally I generally follow the PEP except for things like unit tests and such that I don't want always loaded because I know they aren't going to be used except for test code.

answered 2008-09-24T17:31:17.093

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