NameError: name 'AF_INET' is not defined (ONLY ON MAC)

Question

So I have python installed in three places: A Windows machine, a Pi (Running Kali), and my Mac. My Mac is the only one where I get this error when either importing the socket library or a library dependent upon the socket library (i.e. ipwhois). I ran it in sudo, I tried both python 2 and 3 and still no success. Here is what I get:

Python 2.7.14 (default, Oct  1 2017, 15:09:23) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 9.0.0 (clang-900.0.37)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>>import socket
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "socket.py", line 15, in <module>
    serverSocket = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
NameError: name 'AF_INET' is not defined
>>> import ipwhois
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/user/homebrew/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ipwhois/__init__.py", line 26, in <module>
    from .net import Net
  File "/Users/user/homebrew/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ipwhois/net.py", line 26, in <module>
    import socket
  File "socket.py", line 15, in <module>
    serverSocket = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
NameError: name 'AF_INET' is not defined

Again, no issues with either of these libraries on my Windows or Linux box. I'm not really sure where to go from here. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

AF_INET is define inside the socket, so try the below way:

from socket import AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM

If you want to know what it include inside the socket try the follow way:

import socket

print dir(socket)

Answer 2

From your comment, the error occurs in one specific directory. The socket module tries to import some other modules, notably _socket. If you have a file with this name in current directory, bad things are guaranteed to occur. The general rule is that you should never have a user module starting with a _ or re-using the name of a module from the standard library.