i want to import another python file in the same folder, for example a.py with contents:

from ..b import b
...

i always meet ImportError: attempted relative import with no known parent package when i try to import it with m = importlib.import_module('a', '.') , i also tried importlib.util stuffs and it doesnt work either

replacing with from . import a as m at the same place works, but i want to import it according to input string so it leads to this problem

the only way i found is:

md = {'__name__': globals()['__name__']}
exec('from . import a as m', md)
a = md['m']

using exec sounds terrible, but is there another way to achieve this? and how can i use importlib to do it? what is the difference between the import statement and calling importlib function?