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pythontkintercoding-stylepep8

Tkinter documentation is contradicting PEP 8

PEP 8 states

Wildcard imports (from import *) should be avoided, as they make it unclear which names are present in the namespace, confusing both readers and many automated tools.

Nonetheless the official documentation is contradicting:

to use Tkinter all you need is a simple import statement:

import tkinter

Or, more often:

 from tkinter import *

Is this a "documentation bug" ?

Solution

  • I raised bug issue 32830 on this point and the consensus (reached by Python core developers) is that although the from tkinter import * does violate PEP 8, this is a reasonable exception because tkinter "provides the enormous number of names (mostly constants like RIGHT or VERTICAL) which are convenient to use without prefix." Additionally, PEP 8 states "do not break backwards compatibility just to comply with this PEP!" and since tkinter is frequently imported in this way currently, this sentiment applies here.