How to import module when module name has a ‘-‘ dash or hyphen in it?

I want to import foo-bar.py. This works:

foobar = __import__("foo-bar")

This does not:

from "foo-bar" import *

My question: Is there any way that I can use the above format i.e., from "foo-bar" import * to import a module that has a - in it?

Answers:

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Method 1

Starting from Python 3.1, you can use importlib :

import importlib  
foobar = importlib.import_module("foo-bar")

( https://docs.python.org/3/library/importlib.html )

Method 2

you can’t. foo-bar is not an identifier. rename the file to foo_bar.py

Edit: If import is not your goal (as in: you don’t care what happens with sys.modules, you don’t need it to import itself), just getting all of the file’s globals into your own scope, you can use execfile

# contents of foo-bar.py
baz = 'quux'

>>> execfile('foo-bar.py')
>>> baz
'quux'
>>>

Method 3

If you can’t rename the module to match Python naming conventions, create a new module to act as an intermediary:

 ---- foo_proxy.py ----
 tmp = __import__('foo-bar')
 globals().update(vars(tmp))

 ---- main.py ----
 from foo_proxy import *

Method 4

If you can’t rename the original file, you could also use a symlink:

ln -s foo-bar.py foo_bar.py

Then you can just:

from foo_bar import *

Method 5

Like other said you can’t use the “-” in python naming, there are many workarounds, one such workaround which would be useful if you had to add multiple modules from a path is using sys.path

For example if your structure is like this:

foo-bar
├── barfoo.py
└── __init__.py

import sys
sys.path.append('foo-bar')

import barfoo

Method 6

in Python 3.6
I had the same problem “invalid syntax” when directly

import 'jaro-winkler' as jw

said
“No module named 'jaro-winkler'” when using:

jw = __import__('jaro-winkler')

and importlib.import_module() same.

finally i use pip uninstall the jaro-winkler module…just FYI

Method 7

This was my scenario: I have a python library cloned in a git submodule which has a dash in its name:

|- python-my-lib
| `- mylib.py
`- my-script.py

It took me a long time to figure out the equivalent of:

# Do NOT use this!
sys.path.insert(1, './my-lib')
from mylib import MyClass

Appending the path is not an option, as it would only work if you run the script within the same directory. If you do /home/user/bin/my-script.py, this will fail.

This is the solution:

import importlib
mylib_module = importlib.import_module("python-my-lib.mylib")
MyClass = mylib_module.MyClass

Feel free to further improve this solution, if you know a simpler solution.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0