colon, the first character of the value is lost.

NULL.  In that case, return NULL rather than dumping core.

This fixes PR#91, submitted by Lele Gaifax.

'%(' was found in first position (found by Fred Drake).

Withdraw the change that Fred just checked in -- it was a poorly
documented feature, not a bug, to ignore I/O errors in read().

The new docstring explains the reason for the feature:
"""
this is designed so that you can specifiy a list of potential
configuration file locations (e.g. current directory, user's home
directory, systemwide directory), and all existing configuration files
in the list will be read.
"""

Also add a lower-level function, readfp(), which takes an open file
object (and optionally a filename).

XXX There are some other problems with this module, but I don't have
time to dig into these; in particular, there are complaints that the
%(name)s substitution from the [DEFAULTS] section doesn't work
correctly.

  global options table.
Every Command instance now has its own copies of the global options,
  which automatically fallback to the Distribution instance.  Changes:
  - initialize them in constructor
  - added '__getattr__()' to handle the fallback logic
  - changed every 'self.distribution.{verbose,dry_run}' in Command to
    'self.{verbose,dry_run}'.
  - filesystem utility methods ('copy_file()' et al) don't take 'update'
    parameter anymore -- instead we pass 'not force' to the underlying
    function as 'update'
Changed parsing of command line so that global options apply to all
  commands as well -- that's how (eg.) Command.verbose will be initialized.
Simplified 'make_file()' to use 'newer_group()' (from util module).
Deleted some cruft.
Some docstring tweaks.

  the code a bit and should make it work under Windows even with trailing
  backslash.
Fixed a couple of docstrings.
Added comment about 'make_file()' possibly being redundant and unnecessary.

-q/--quiet reasonably elegantly.

  - change how we call it
  - added methods 'library_dir_option()', 'library_option()', and
    'find_library_file()' that it calls
Added 'force' flag; it's automatically "respected", because this class
  always rebuilds everything!  (Which it to say, "force=0" is not respected.)

Catch up with changes in 'gen_lib_options()':
  - change how we call it
  - added methods 'library_dir_option()', 'library_option()', and
    'find_library_file()' that it calls
Added 'force' flag and changed compile/link methods to respect it.

  has a directory component, then we only search for the library in
  that one directory, ie. ignore the 'library_dirs' lists for that
  one library.
Changed calling convention to 'gen_lib_options()' again: now, it takes
  a CCompiler instance and calls methods on it instead of taking
  format strings.  Also implemented the new "library name" semantics
  using the 'find_library_file()' method in the CCompiler instance.
Added 'force' flag to CCompiler; added to constructor and 'new_compiler()'.
Added 'warn()' method.

Attached is a context diff to winsound.c that adds a Beep() function
to play a sound through the PC speaker.  Seems to make sense to have
this added, so I just went and did it!

passing either a string/input buffer or None.

around external decls.

doesn't have one (stdin and such), OpenRF appears to be an expensive call.

Slightly improved the code for dealing with newline on a comment line,
  and for stripping whitespace.

Catch up with renamed 'platdir' -> 'build_platlib' option in 'build'.
Don't call 'set_final_options()' in 'run()' anymore -- that's now
  guaranteed to be taken care of for us by the Distribution instance.
If 'include_dirs' is a string, split it on os.pathsep (this is half-
  hearted -- support for setting compile/link options on the command
  line is totally lame and probably won't work at all).
Added 'get_source_files()' for use by 'dist' command.
Added code to 'build_extensions()' to figure out the "def file" to use
  with MSVC++ and add it to the linker command line as an "extra_postarg".

Don't call 'set_final_options()' in 'run()' anymore -- that's now
  guaranteed to be taken care of for us by the Distribution instance.
Rearranged to bit to allow outsiders (specifically, the 'dist' command)
  to find out what modules we would build:
  - 'find_modules()' renamed to 'find_package_modules()'
  - most of 'build_modules()' abstracted out to 'find_modules()'
  - added 'get_source_files()' (for the 'dist' command to use)
  - drastically simplified 'build_modules()' -- now just a wrapper around
    'find_modules()' and 'build_module()'

Tweaked some help strings to be consistent with documentation.
Don't call 'set_final_options()' in 'run()' anymore -- that's now
  guaranteed to be taken care of for us by the Distribution instance.

  - add 'extra_preargs' and 'extra_postargs' parameters (and use them!)
  - got rid of 'build_info' kludge parameter
  - added 'compiler_type' class attribute
  - respect reordered arguments to 'gen_lib_options()'
Also added 'output_dir' parameter (catching up with older change in
  CCompiler) -- BUT this is presently ignored by all methods!
Deleted some more docstrings redundant with CCompiler.
Dropped generated of "/DEF:" argument --- that's now done by
  the 'build_ext' command.

  - add 'extra_preargs' and 'extra_postargs' parameters (and use them!)
  - added 'compiler_type' class attribute
  - respect reordered arguments to 'gen_lib_options()'