While loading a local file with the loadtxt function I received an exception that was related to importing the urlopen module. Since I tried to open a local file I was a bit surprised by this error. Going through the stack-trace I ended up in the _datasource.py file.

Here on line 551, the module is tried to be loaded:

    # We import this here because importing urllib2 is slow and
    # a significant fraction of numpy's total import time.
    if sys.version_info[0] >= 3:
        from urllib.request import urlopen
        from urllib.error import URLError
    else:
        from urllib2 import urlopen
        from urllib2 import URLError

    # Test local path
    if os.path.exists(path):
        return True

I noticed that on line 558 the file is actually being checked for being a local file, which being true in my case should not require the urlopen module to be loaded.

I would like to propose to change the code at line 550 to:

    # Test local path
    if os.path.exists(path):
        return True

    # We import this here because importing urllib2 is slow and
    # a significant fraction of numpy's total import time.
    if sys.version_info[0] >= 3:
        from urllib.request import urlopen
        from urllib.error import URLError
    else:
        from urllib2 import urlopen
        from urllib2 import URLError

This will result in the same behavior but will be quicker when a file is a local file and, in my case prevent the exception.

Reproducing code example:

In my case the exception was cause by the missing _socket object/module which is being imported deep down when importing the urlopen module

Numpy/Python version information:

The proposed change is based on the current code, revision #12388