It seems that if you import a submodule, cause its parent package to be destroyed, then attempt to re-import the submodule, the parent package is properly re-imported but the submodule does not get set on it.

The session below demonstrates this. After the second xml.sax import, "xml" is the xml package module as expected, but xml.sax does not exist. I'm not familiar with all of the import semantics, but it seems odd to me that "foo.bar" could ever fail to exist right after an "import foo.bar".

Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Sep 19 2006, 09:52:17) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] o
32
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>>> import sys, xml.sax
>>> del xml, sys.modules["xml"]
>>> import xml.sax
>>> xml.sax
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'sax'
>>>

The same example works OK for me on 2.5.1 on Windows.

Yes, it's fixed in Python 2.5 and newer.