MessageBeep().

Removed dead code.

- CHECK_VALID() was checking the wrong value for a closed fd
- fseek(&_iob[fileno], ...) doesn't work for fileno >= 20

exceptionally large totals etc.

  recursively.
- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
  arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.

of saying x->ob_type.

typecheck that guarantees it's a string, and BTW string subclasses
could hide references.

Currently, the cygwinccompiler.py compiler handling in
distutils is invoking the cygwin and mingw compilers
with the -static option.

Logically, this means that the linker should choose to
link to static libraries instead of shared/dynamically
linked libraries.

Current win32 binutils expect import libraries to have
a .dll.a suffix and static libraries to have .a suffix.
If -static is passed, it will skip the .dll.a
libraries. This is pain if one has a tree with both
static and dynamic libraries using this naming
convention, and wish to use the dynamic libraries.

The -static option being passed in distutils is to get
around a bug in old versions of binutils where it would
get confused when it found the DLLs themselves.

The decision to use static or shared libraries is site
or package specific, and should be left to the setup
script or to command line options.

If a class was defined inside a function, used a static or class
method, and used super() inside the method body, it would be caught in
an uncollectable cycle.  (Simplified version: The static/class method
object would point to a function object with a closure that referred
to the class.)

Bugfix candidate.

when DST began.

These never failed in 2.3, and the tests confirm it.  They still blow up
in the 2.2 branch, despite that all the gc-vs-__del__ fixes from 2.3
have been backported (and this is expected -- 2.2 needs more work than
2.3 needed).

Based on a suggestion from a reader.

cases, wrote docs, added a test.

of PyObject_HasAttr(); the former promises never to execute
arbitrary Python code.  Undid many of the changes recently made to
worm around the worst consequences of that PyObject_HasAttr() could
execute arbitrary Python code.

Compatibility is hard to discuss, because the dangerous cases are
so perverse, and much of this appears to rely on implementation
accidents.

To start with, using hasattr() to check for __del__ wasn't only
dangerous, in some cases it was wrong:  if an instance of an old-
style class didn't have "__del__" in its instance dict or in any
base class dict, but a getattr hook said __del__ existed, then
hasattr() said "yes, this object has a __del__".  But
instance_dealloc() ignores the possibility of getattr hooks when
looking for a __del__, so while object.__del__ succeeds, no
__del__ method is called when the object is deleted.  gc was
therefore incorrect in believing that the object had a finalizer.

The new method doesn't suffer that problem (like instance_dealloc(),
_PyObject_Lookup() doesn't believe __del__ exists in that case), but
does suffer a somewhat opposite-- and even more obscure --oddity:
if an instance of an old-style class doesn't have "__del__" in its
instance dict, and a base class does have "__del__" in its dict,
and the first base class with a "__del__" associates it with a
descriptor (an object with a __get__ method), *and* if that
descriptor raises an exception when __get__ is called, then
(a) the current method believes the instance does have a __del__,
but (b) hasattr() does not believe the instance has a __del__.

While these disagree, I believe the new method is "more correct":
because the descriptor *will* be called when the object is
destructed, it can execute arbitrary Python code at the time the
object is destructed, and that's really what gc means by "has a
finalizer":  not specifically a __del__ method, but more generally
the possibility of executing arbitrary Python code at object
destruction time.  Code in a descriptor's __get__() executed at
destruction time can be just as problematic as code in a
__del__() executed then.

So I believe the new method is better on all counts.

Bugfix candidate, but it's unclear to me how all this differs in
the 2.2 branch (e.g., new-style and old-style classes already
took different gc paths in 2.3 before this last round of patches,
but don't in the 2.2 branch).

out whether __del__ exists, without executing any Python-level code.