Importing multiple files named sequentially in Python

Question

I have about 50 Python files in a directory, all named in a sequential order, for example: myfile1, myfile2.....myfile50. Now, I want to import the contents of these files inside another Python file. This is what I tried:

i = 0
while i < 51:
    file_name = 'myfile' + i
    import file_name
    i += 1

However, I get the following error:

ImportError: No module named file_name

How may I import all these sequentially named files inside another Python file, without having to write import for each file individually?

Answer 1

You can't use import to import modules from a string containing their name. You could, however, use importlib:

import importlib

i = 0
while i < 51:
    file_name = 'myfile' + str(i)
    importlib.import_module(file_name)
    i += 1

Also, note that the "pythonic" way of iterating a set number of times would be to use a for loop:

for i in range(0, 51):
    file_name = 'myfile' + str(i)
    importlib.import_module(file_name)