>>> len(dir())
4
>>> import urllib.request import *
>>> len(dir())
88


In this list we find 14 modules:
['base64', 'collections', 'ssl', 'bisect', 'http', 're', 'email', 'socket', 'os', 'posixpath', 'hashlib', 'io', 'time', 'sys']

And many non-documented functions:
 - ftperrors
 - getproxies_environment
 - getproxies_macosx_sysconf
 - localhost
 - noheaders
 - parse_http_list
 - parse_keqv_list
 - proxy_bypass
 - proxy_bypass_environment
 - proxy_bypass_macosx_sysconf
 - quote
 - randombytes
 - request_host
 - urlunparse
 - splitattr
 - splithost
 - splitpasswd
 - splitport
 - splitquery
 - splittag
 - splittype
 - splituser
 - splitvalue
 - thishost
 - to_bytes
 - unquote
 - unwrap
 - urljoin
 - urlparse
 - urlsplit

It may be good to define __all__ for this module, and to preprend "_" on some of these names.

This is technically backward incompatible, so if we define an __all__ with most of these names, we are officially making them public, if we leave them out, from urllib.request import * will break for someone.
You could argue that import * is discouraged though.

Let's deprecate some of these (or add deprecation warnings) for
upcoming release.  But, doing from xxx import * is not a recommended
way for any module, as we know that it stands to pollute the namespace
with unneccesary functions/methods. I would be careful in adding
anything to __all__ and if done, may go for only 3.3. Ezio has a valid
point.

We should only expose the names which are documented.
The modules and the objects from urllib.parse don't need to be exposed in urllib.request.

I suggest to apply this patch on 3.3 only.

New changeset 70dedd8ce8f3 by Senthil Kumaran in branch 'default':
issue13287 - Define __all__ for urllib.request and urllib.error and expose only
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/70dedd8ce8f3

Thanks flox for the patch.

Just the News item is added. I don't think, this requires any Docs update. One change I had to make in the patch is to remote HTTPSHandler from __all__ because that is only conditionally available when http.client supports HTTPSConnection.  Neither might this require a docs update because Handlers may be used only within urllib.request namespace and not standalone.

test_urllib2.test___all__() is failing on Windows. Example:

http://www.python.org/dev/buildbot/all/builders/x86%20XP-4%203.x/builds/5498/steps/test/logs/stdio

======================================================================
FAIL: test___all__ (test.test_urllib2.TrivialTests)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\cygwin\home\db3l\buildarea\3.x.bolen-windows\build\lib\test\test_urllib2.py", line 32, in test___all__
    (k, module, v.__module__))
AssertionError: 'nturl2path' != 'urllib.request'
- nturl2path
+ urllib.request
 : 'pathname2url' is exposed in 'urllib.request' but defined in 'nturl2path'

----------------------------------------------------------------------

New changeset ca78ed7393bf by Florent Xicluna in branch 'default':
Fix test_urllib2 error on Windows in relation with issue #13287.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/ca78ed7393bf