and replacing it with newer distutils package in the python standard library the status of this is unclear--it was anticipated in but did not appear--so be sure to see python' "what' newdocuments for updates on this front that may emerge after this book is released summary in this we covered the basics of modulesattributesand imports and explored the operation of import statements we learned that imports find the designated file on the module search pathcompile it to byte codeand execute all of its statements to generate its contents we also learned how to configure the search path to be able to import from directories other than the home directory and the standard library directoriesprimarily with pythonpath settings as this demonstratedthe import operation and modules are at the heart of program architecture in python larger programs are divided into multiple fileswhich are linked together at runtime by imports imports in turn use the module search path to locate filesand modules define attributes for external use of coursethe whole point of imports and modules is to provide structure to your programwhich divides its logic into self-contained software components code in one module is isolated from code in anotherin factno file can ever see the names defined in anotherunless explicit import statements are run because of thismodules minimize name collisions between different parts of your program you'll see what this all means in terms of actual statements and code in the next before we move onthoughlet' run through the quiz test your knowledgequiz how does module source code file become module object why might you have to set your pythonpath environment variable name the five major components of the module import search path name four file types that python might load in response to an import operation what is namespaceand what does module' namespace containtest your knowledgeanswers module' source code file automatically becomes module object when that module is imported technicallythe module' source code is run during the imtest your knowledgeanswers