Python equivalent to PHP include

Question

I need a Python equivalent of PHP's include function. I know of execfile(), but that doesn't work the same. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Try import, with a try/except on ImportError:

try:
    import modulename
except ImportError:
    print 'importing modulename failed'

Without catching ImportError it is the equivalent of require, sorta-kinda.

Do note that python will only execute the module code once (making this more a include_once or require_once statement. Functions in the module can be called more than once, of course.

Answer 2

If what you want is to set a string variable in your script to the contents of an external file a la php (Example #6 Using output buffering to include a PHP file into a string ...) then this might work:

s = open('file.abc').read()