[python] Python can't find module in the same folder

My python somehow can't find any modules in the same directory. What am I doing wrong? (python2.7)

So I have one directory '2014_07_13_test', with two files in it:

1. test.py
2. hello.py

where hello.py:

# !/usr/local/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

def hello1():
    print 'HelloWorld!'

and test.py:

# !/usr/local/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

from hello import hello1

hello1()

Still python gives me

>>> Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 4, in <module>
ImportError: No module named hello

What's wrong?

Here is the generic solution I use. It solves the problem for importing from modules in the same folder:

import os.path
import sys
sys.path.append(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), '..'))

Put this at top of the module which gives the error "No module named xxxx"

If you are sure that all the modules, files you're trying to import are in the same folder and they should be picked directly just by giving the name and not the reference path then your editor or terminal should have opened the main folder where all the files/modules are present.

Either, try running from Terminal, make sure first you go to the correct directory.

cd path to the root folder where all the modules are

python script.py

Or if running [F5] from the editor i.e VsCode then open the complete folder there and not the individual files.

In my case, Python was unable to find it because I'd put the code inside a module with hyphens, e.g. my-module. When I changed it to my_module it worked.

Change your import in test.py to:

from .hello import hello1

The following doesn't solve the OP's problem, but the title and error is exactly what I faced.

If your project has a setup.py script in it, you can install that package you are in, with python3 -m pip install -e . or python3 setup.py install or python3 setup.py develop, and this package will be installed, but still editable (so changes to the code will be seen when importing the package). If it doesn't have a setup.py, make sense of it.

Anyway, the problem OP faces seems to not exist anymore?

file one.py:

def function():
    print("output")

file two.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import one
one.function()

chmod +x two.py # To allow execution of the python file
./two.py # Only works if you have a python shebang

Command line output: output

Other solutions seem 'dirty'

In the case of OP with 2 test files, modifying them to work is probably fine. However, in other real scenarios, the methods listed in the other answers is probably not recommended. They require you to modify the python code or restrict your flexibility (running the python file from a specific directory) and generally introduce annoyances. What if you've just cloned a project, and this happens? It probably already works for other people, and making code changes is unnecessary. The chosen answer also wants people to run a script from a specific folder to make it work. This can be a source of long term annoyance, which is never good. It also suggests adding your specific python folder to PATH (can be done through python or command line). Again, what happens if you rename or move the folder in a few months? You have to hunt down this page again, and eventually discover you need to set the path (and that you did exactly this a few months ago), and that you simply need to update a path (sure you could use sys.path and programmatically set it, but this can be flaky still). Many sources of great annoyance.

I ran into this issue. I had three folders in the same directory so I had to specify which folder. Ex: from Folder import script

I had a similar problem, I solved it by explicitly adding the file's directory to the path list:

import os
import sys

file_dir = os.path.dirname(__file__)
sys.path.append(file_dir)

After that, I had no problem importing from the same directory.