import everything from a module except a few methods

Question

Is it possible to import everything (*) from an existing Python module except a number of explicitly specified methods?

(Background: Against recommended Python practice it is common in FEniCS to do from dolfin import *. A few of the methods names contain the string "Test" though (e.g., TestFunction()) and are mistaken for unit tests by nose.)

Answer 1

In case you don't have an access to the module, you can also simply remove these methods or variables from a global namespace. Here's how this could be done:

to_exclude = ['foo']

from somemodule import *

for name in to_exclude:
    del globals()[name]