What is the purpose of “from __builtin__ import True”?

Question

In some python code examples I see, from __builtin__ import True .

True is already built in, so i was wondering why should it be imported?

Answer 1

There's no good reason, unless a module has, for some reason, overridden True , and you want the original value back:

Python 2.7.15 (default, Feb 12 2019, 11:00:12)
>>> True = 8
>>> True
8
>>> from __builtin__ import True
>>> True
True
>>>

Also, True , False and None are keywords in Python 3, so this isn't possible in the first place.

Python 3.7.2 (default, Feb 12 2019, 08:15:36)
>>> True = 8
SyntaxError: can not assign to keyword
>>> from __builtin__ import True
    from __builtin__ import True
SyntaxError: invalid syntax    ^