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Python imports, reloads, and associated dangers by Sorcha Bowler

Python imports, reloads, and associated dangers by Sorcha Bowler

This talk is part of "PyLadies Dublin Aug Virtual Event - Poetry | Python Imports"
- When: Tuesday, August 18, 2020
- Event Page: https://www.meetup.com/PyLadiesDublin/events/271722192/

Talk Description:
I lost a half a day's work to trying to find a bug that didn't exist because reloading imports didn't do what I thought it would. I'm here to save you that fate.

About Sorcha Bowler:
Sorcha studied computer science in college, did a non-coding job for many years, taught themself python, got a coding job, and now writes code for Google and is still rather surprised by that.

PyLadies Dublin

August 18, 2020
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Transcript

  1. Python imports, reloads
    (and associated dangers)

    View Slide

  2. A quick aside about Enums
    ● Enum is short for Enumerated Type
    ● I’ve come across them far more in other languages, but they’re in Python
    >>> from enum import Enum
    >>> class Color(Enum):
    ... RED = 1
    ... GREEN = 2
    ... BLUE = 3
    ● Now you can use Color.RED as a constant
    ● Color.RED is always Color.RED. Color.GREEN is always Color.GREEN

    View Slide

  3. A rough
    reconstruction of
    a work day I had.
    (with less swearing)

    View Slide

  4. Let’s add a few
    quick prints and
    try that again.

    View Slide

  5. A quick aside about Identity in python
    ● Python separates out the ideas of ‘is the same as’ (= =) and
    ‘is the same actual thing as’ (is)
    ○ Mostly we come across this as being told that we should use ‘is None’ instead of ‘== None’
    because something something custom comparison operators
    ● You can get the identity of an object with the id() function
    ● Interestingly, python stores a single copy of the integers from -5 to 256, but
    creates a new object for integers outside that range each time, so
    >>> a = 256
    >>> b = 256
    >>> a is b
    True
    >>> a = 257
    >>> b = 257
    >>> a is b
    False

    View Slide

  6. Once more,
    with id()

    View Slide

  7. Conclusions
    ● importlib.reload will not reload things loaded as ‘from import
    ○ One way around this (I learned, while writing these slides) would have been this:
    ■ >>> import file_b
    ■ >>> file_b.MyEnum
    ■ Instead of this
    ■ >>> from file_b import MyEnum
    ■ >>> MyEnum
    ● Enum identity is set when the file it is in is imported

    View Slide

  8. View Slide