python "string" module?

Question

So I'm reading this old module from I think around 2002 and it has this line "import string". Did Python require you to import a string module explicitly before to be able to use string type variables or something? I don't see it used like this in the code:

string.something

Answer 1

The string module contains a set of useful constants, such as ascii_letters and digits, and the module is often still imported for that reason.

Answer 2

If you see a import string but never see string.something, someone just forgot to remove an unused import.

While there did use to be some things in string that are now standard methods of str objects, you still had to either

1. prefix them with string. after importing the library, or
2. use from string import <whatever> syntax.

Typically, the only times you'll see something properly imported but never "explicitly used" are from __future__ import with_statement or the like - the forwards/backwards compatability triggers used by Python for new language features.