Chapter 17. Module Packages

So far, when we've imported a module, we've been loading files. This represents typical module usage, and is what you will probably use for most imports you'll code early on in your Python career. The module import story is a bit more rich than we have thus far implied.

Imports can name a directory path, in addition to a module name. When they do, they are known as package imports—a directory of Python code is said to be a package. This is a somewhat advanced feature, but turns out to be handy for organizing the files in a large system, and tends to simplify module search path settings. As we'll see, package imports are also sometimes required in order to resolve ambiguities when multiple programs are installed on a single machine.