Avoid Dot Imports

ID

go.avoid_dot_imports

Severity

low

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Code Smell

Language

Go

Tags

code-style, readability

Description

Reports a dot import (import . "pkg"). A dot import merges every exported identifier of the imported package directly into the current file’s scope.

Rationale

With a dot import a bare Println(…​) could come from the imported package or from a local declaration — the reader cannot tell, and tooling has a harder time too. Worse, when the imported package later adds an exported name it can silently shadow or collide with a local one. Qualified imports keep every name’s origin explicit and make the file robust against upstream changes.

import . "fmt"   // FLAW — Println, Sprintf, ... leak into this file's scope

import "fmt"     // OK — qualified: fmt.Println(...)
import f "fmt"   // OK — explicit alias

Remediation

Remove the dot and use the package qualifier at each call site (fmt.Println(…​)). If the qualifier is too long, give the import a short explicit alias instead.

References