Does a leading "_" in a module name mean "internal"?

[wayneadams]

Is there a reason why many of the modules that have leading "internal" underscores? When I see "_", I assume that that I should not use the things within.

For example:

• from_3d_numpy_to_2d_array seems to be a public function, but its parent is _convert.py
• WeightedEnsembleClassifier is certainly a public class, but its parent is _ensemble.py

But, maybe there's some other meaning that I don't know about. Do the leading underscores for modules mean "internal"?

[baraline]

I think the idea behind this design is that you should import/use things exposed from init files, which themselves will import functions from the modules with underscores.
This allons to define whats part of the "public" API, which can be subject to deprecation etc..
Importing straight from _***.py module is not very practical/pythonic either.

[wayneadams]

That makes 100% sense! I forgot about __init__ files. I like the idea of collecting all the important things in just a few places.

Thanks for the quick reply!