Error handling when importing modules

Question

This probably has an obvious answer, but I\'m a beginner. I\'ve got a \"module\" (really just a file with a bunch of functions I often use) at the beginning of which I impo

Answer 1

As advocated by https://stackoverflow.com/a/20228312/1587329 [modified, with an edit from @Ian]

from importlib import import_module

named_libs = [('numpy', 'np'), ('matplotlib', 'mp')] # (library_name, shorthand)
for (name, short) in named_libs:
    try:
        lib = import_module(name)
    except:
        print sys.exc_info()
    else:
        globals()[short] = lib

imports all libraries in named_libs. The first string is the library name, the second the shorthand. For unnamed libraries, you can use the original:

from importlib import import_module     

libnames = ['numpy', 'scipy', 'operator']
for libname in libnames:
    try:
        lib = import_module(libname)
    except:
        print sys.exc_info()
    else:
        globals()[libname] = lib