Wild hook

A python import hook that rewrites source files to add one extra feature:

import module*

That's all.

It only imports the first match. Might break zip imports. Likely also disables .pyc caching. Doesn't work with __main__ so use python -m.

Installation

$ cp wild_hook.py usercustomize.py $(python -m site --user-site)

Demo

$ cat example.py
import test*
$ cat testfoo.py
print('foo')
$ python -m example
foo

Exciting, right?

Why

A certain someone read the docs of openscad and thought that includes behaved like this, allowing wildcards but only taking the first match. A couple of hours later we realized it doesn't, but I already had 80% of this shitpost written up.

What name do I use to access that module in the code?

Does it look like I thought this through?

References

These pages were useful while writing this:

• https://docs.python.org/3/library/importlib.html#setting-up-an-importer
  • A bare but useful example on how to set up an importer that just uses the same class as the default one.
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43571737/how-to-implement-an-import-hook-that-can-modify-the-source-code-on-the-fly-using
  • Has a concrete example of subclassing those classes, although not in the most convenient way.
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/214881/can-you-add-new-statements-to-pythons-syntax
  • Several neat ideas, like rewriting the token stream with the tokenizer module (used in this project), or using sys.settrace (not used)
• https://github.com/ajalt/fuckitpy
  • Didn't use any ideas from here, but worth looking at for AST manipulation inspiration