When a module named spam is imported, the interpreter first searches for a built-in module with that name. These module names are listed in sys.builtin_module_names. If not found, it then searches for a file named spam.py in a list of directories given by the variable sys.path. sys.path is initialized from these locations:
The directory containing the input script (or the current directory when no file is specified).
PYTHONPATH (a list of directory names, with the same syntax as the shell variable PATH).
The installation-dependent default (by convention including a site-packages directory, handled by the site module).