> The fact that ChainMap pollutes namespace when doing star import ("from string import *"), however, is unfortunate.

This is what I meant by "this kind of thing". (IPython also ignores underscored names for autocomplete suggestions, unless you start with an underscore. IPython doesn't respect `__all__` by default, but that's a report for IPython's tracker.)


> This case is the opposite: we want to limit the exported names.

(Well, not exactly the opposite. Same purpose.)