[PyQt] Strange shadowing of hex() function by PyQt4.QtCore

[Phil Thompson]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2008 08:02:55 +0100, Mark Summerfield <mark at qtrac.eu> wrote:
> On 2008-08-08, Boris Barbour wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Importing PyQt4.QtCore seems to alter or shadow the builtin hex()
>> function. I'm afraid I haven't tracked things down further - I just
>> learnt the hard way to "import" instead of "from import *". However,
>> I'm not sure the clash is intended, so I'm reporting it.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Boris
> [snip]
> 
> It is unfortunate that doing * imports on PyQt4 brings in some objects
> which don't begin with q or Q. Here's a solution for hex shown as an
> IDLE session:
> 
>     >>> hex(123)
>     '0x7b'
>     >>> from PyQt4.QtCore import *
>     >>> hex(123)
> 
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>     File "<pyshell#3>", line 1, in <module>
> 	hex(123)
>     TypeError: argument 1 of hex() has an invalid type
>     >>> __builtins__.hex(123)
>     '0x7b'
>     >>> # restore built-in hex
>     >>> hex = __builtins__.hex
>     >>> hex(123) 
>     '0x7b'
> 
> In Python 3 you'll be able to do "import builtins" and use
> builtins.hex(). But I'm hoping that in PyQt4 for Python 3, the * imports
> will only import objects that begin with q or Q, forcing the handful of
> objects that don't meet this criterion to either be imported explicitly
> or accessed fully qualified. [Any comment on this, Phil?]

I'm not going to treat specific names differently as it's not a PyQt
problem.

Don't use "import *" - ever, in any Python code.

Phil