Remove a currently imported library?

[HTMLperson5]

Is there any way to remove an imported library?

Python 2.7.3 (default, Apr 10 2012, 23:31:26) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license()" for more information.
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__'] (Currently imported packages)
>>> import time
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__', 'time']
New module, "time". If you wanted to "un-import" a library, how would you do it?
Something like

Python 2.7.3 (default, Apr 10 2012, 23:31:26) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license()" for more information.
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__'] (Currently imported packages)
>>> import time
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__', 'time'] (New library time)
>>> un-import(time) (For an example command, anything like this?)
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__'] (Library "time" removed)

[Gribouillis]

It's not very useful. You could del time to remove the name time from the current namespace, but it would not unimport the module. The module is still in sys.modules['time']. You could del sys.modules[module.__name__], but it would not really unimport it as other modules may keep a reference to the module.

What you can try is reload(module). It runs the module's python code a second time. Unfortunately it doesn't reinitialize C modules like time because in C-python, such modules are shared libraries.

If you want to import a module only temporarily to perform a specific task, one way is to launch a python child process which imports the module (using module multiprocessing for example) instead of importing it directly in the main process.

[HiHe]

run

help('import')

My question, why would you want to remove an imported module?