In Python 2.3a2 in interactive mode an import after an
os.chdir imports the module in the new current
directory after the os.chdir.

This is the same as Python 2.2.2 does both in
interactive and non-interactive mode.

In Python 2.3a2 in non-interactive mode an import after
an os.chdir does not import the module in the new
current directory after the os.chdir.  Instead it
attempts to import a module (if present) by that name
in the previous current directory before the os.chdir.
If there is not a module by that name in the previous
current directory, there is an ImportError exception.

The above results are on a Debian Linux system using an
Intel 32 bit processor.

No PYTHONSTARTUP environment variable was set.
No PYTHONPATH environment variable was set.

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Additional Info -- I have now tried more than one
os.chdir before the import in non-interactive mode and
found that the words "previous current directory" in
the original description should be more accurately
expressed as "ORIGINAL current directory."

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Right, I'm nearly sure that this is the behaviour that we want.

When run interactively, the first item in sys.path is '',
but when run from a script, it is the path to the directory
that the script lives in. If we reverted to the 2.2.2
behaviour, multi-module scripts couldn't use os.chdir() for
fear of randomly breaking imports.

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Closing, because this isn't a bug.