%run -m doesn't support relative imports

[pag]

I'm trying to use %run -m to run modules within some packages, but it doesn't work quite like python -m: it doesn't support relative imports.

For example, I have the following two files:

• ./foo/init.py

  x = 1
  

• ./foo/bar.py

  from . import x
  print x
  

With python -m foo.bar or ipython -m foo.bar the output is x. With %run, however:

>>> run -m test.bar
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/IPython/utils/py3compat.py", line 179, in execfile
    __builtin__.execfile(filename, *where)
  File "/private/tmp/test/bar.py", line 1, in <module>
    from . import x
ValueError: Attempted relative import in non-package

[bfroehle]

Yes, confirmed bug. The %run code is pretty involved, so it might be a bit of a project to fix this.

As a temporary solution (and inspiration for an eventual patch) look at runpy.run_module which you could use as:

In [6]: import runpy

In [7]: runpy.run_module('foo.bar');
1

[tkf]

I fixed this in #3066