this book covers python up to onlyat this writingthere is talk in pep of possibly addressing some package issues in python perhaps even allowing relative imports to be used in program mode on the other handthis initiative' scope and outcome is uncertain and would work only on and laterthe full path solution given here is version-neutraland is more than year away in any event that isyou can wait for change to change that limited functionalityor simply use triedand-true full package paths python namespace packages now that you've learned all about package and package-relative importsi need to explain that there' new option that modifies some of the ideas we just covered at least abstractlyas of release python has four import models from original to newestbasic module importsimport modfrom mod import attr the original modelimports of files and their contentsrelative to the sys path module search path package importsimport dir dir modfrom dir mod import attr imports that give directory path extensions relative to the sys path module search pathwhere each package is contained in single directory and has an initialization filein python and package-relative importsfrom import mod (relative)import mod (absolutethe model used for intrapackage imports of the prior sectionwith its relative or absolute lookup schemes for dotted and nondotted importsavailable but differing in python and namespace packagesimport splitdir mod the new namespace package model that we'll survey herewhich allows packages to span multiple directoriesand requires no initialization fileintroduced in python the first two of these are self-containedbut the third tightens up the search order and extends syntax for intrapackage importsand the fourth upends some of the core notions and requirements of the prior package model in factpython (and laternow has two flavors of packagesthe original modelnow known as regular packages the alternative modelknown as namespace packages this is similar in spirit to the "classicand "new styleclass model dichotomy we'll meet in the next part of this bookthough the new is more an addition to the old here the original and new package models are not mutually exclusiveand can be used module packages