from ._guessing_game import * imports itself?

[astrojuanlu]

Maybe this is a trivial Python question, but today I was puzzled that the line

from ._guessing_game import *

brings both the contents of _guessing_game.so but also a module object corresponding to _guessing_game.so itself. This code:

# __init__.py
print(dir())
from ._guessing_game import *
print(dir())
print(_guessing_game)

Gives this:

['__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__path__', '__spec__']
['__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__path__', '__spec__', '_guessing_game', 'sum_as_string']
<module 'guessing_game._guessing_game' from '/private/tmp/guessing-game/src/guessing_game/_guessing_game.cpython-313-darwin.so'>

And yet, if one tries to do it explicitly, it doesn't work. This code:

from ._guessing_game import _guessing_game
print(dir())
print(_guessing_game)

Gives

  File "/private/tmp/guessing-game/src/guessing_game/__init__.py", line 1, in <module>
    from ._guessing_game import _guessing_game
ImportError: cannot import name '_guessing_game' from 'guessing_game._guessing_game' (/private/tmp/guessing-game/src/guessing_game/_guessing_game.cpython-313-darwin.so)

My current mental model is "star imports work differently for extension modules", but I don't know if this is correct. Any pointers?

[astrojuanlu]

(I reckon that this probably should have been asked in pyo3/pyo3, happy to continue the discussion there)