Here is an example that imports a module from a ZIP archive - note that the zipimport module is not explicitly used.
$ unzip -l /tmp/example.zip Archive: /tmp/example.zip Length Date Time Name -------- ---- ---- ---- 8467 11-26-02 22:30 jwzthreading.py -------- ------- 8467 1 file $ ./python Python 2.3 (#1, Aug 1 2003, 19:54:32) >>> import sys >>> sys.path.insert(0, '/tmp/example.zip') # Add .zip file to front of path >>> import jwzthreading >>> jwzthreading.__file__ '/tmp/example.zip/jwzthreading.py'