The fullname parameter to zipimporter find_module is documented to be a "fully qualified (dotted) module name". (From http://docs.python.org/library/zipimport.html#zipimport.zipimporter.find_module.) However, passing a fully-qualified dotted module appears to never work. Rather it appears that you must use the file system path separator instead of dots. For example on Windows:

C:\>echo %pythonpath%
\tmp\blah-1.0-py2.6.egg

C:\>python
Python 2.6.5 (r265:79096, Mar 19 2010, 21:48:26) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from blah.models import speak
>>> speak.__file__
'C:\\tmp\\blah-1.0-py2.6.egg\\blah\\models\\speak.pyc'
>>> speak.sayhi()
Hi from blah.models.speak sayhi function.

The egg has top-level blah package and under it models, it appears to work fine for normal use.  But zipimport zipimporter find_module won't find the models sub-module using dotted path notation:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.path[1]
'C:\\tmp\\blah-1.0-py2.6.egg'
>>> import zipimport
>>> zi = zipimport.zipimporter(sys.path[1])
>>> zi.find_module('blah')
<zipimporter object "C:\tmp\blah-1.0-py2.6.egg">
>>> zi.find_module('blah.models')
>>> zi.find_module('blah/models')
>>> zi.find_module('blah\\models')
<zipimporter object "C:\tmp\blah-1.0-py2.6.egg">
>>>

On Linux, the 'blah/models' version is the one that works.

Tested as far back as Python2.3 and as far forward as 2.7a3.

Was also just bitten by this, trying to muck with PEP-302-style import hooks.  Note that the documented behaviour of zipimporter is also the behaviour required by PEP 302, i.e. full dotted module name.

I was bitten now as well...

I have also just been bitten by this. Is there anyway that this can be updated to support the dotted notation?

It gets worse. Even though find_module works with the path separator, load_module fails.


>>> zi.find_module("lib\\ui")
<zipimporter object "dist/Test_Editor-1.0-py3.2.zip">
>>> zi.load_module("lib\\ui")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "dist/Test_Editor-1.0-py3.2.zip\lib\ui\__init__.py", line 9, in <module>
  File "dist\Test_Editor-1.0-py3.2.zip\lib\ui\texteditorwindow.py", line 5, in <module>
  File "dist\Test_Editor-1.0-py3.2.zip\lib\ui\designer\__init__.py", line 5, in <module>
ValueError: Attempted relative import beyond toplevel package

Disregard the last...error on my part (so embarrassing!)

This still exists after zipimport rewrite in Python with 3.8 . Is this a documentation issue or an enhancement to be made as noted in msg109467 ?

Actually find_module() should be deprecated and find_spec() should be defined instead (and the same goes for load_module(); see bpo-9699). So I'm personally fine w/ making this a doc problem w/ the plan to eventually deprecate the method.