strings _are_ valid!

1. In Tcl 8.2 and later, use Tcl_NewUnicodeObj() when passing a Python
Unicode object rather than going through UTF-8.  (This function
doesn't exist in Tcl 8.1, so there the original UTF-8 code is still
used; in Tcl 8.0 there is no support for Unicode.)  This assumes that
Tcl_UniChar is the same thing as Py_UNICODE; a run-time error is
issued if this is not the case.

2. In Tcl 8.1 and later (i.e., whenever Tcl supports Unicode), when a
string returned from Tcl contains bytes with the top bit set, we
assume it is encoded in UTF-8, and decode it into a Unicode string
object.

Notes:

- Passing Unicode strings to Tcl 8.0 does not do the right thing; this
isn't worth fixing.

- When passing an 8-bit string to Tcl 8.1 or later that has bytes with
the top bit set, Tcl tries to interpret it as UTF-8; it seems to fall
back on Latin-1 for non-UTF-8 bytes.  I'm not sure what to do about
this besides telling the user to disambiguate such strings by
converting them to Unicode (forcing the user to be explicit about the
encoding).

- Obviously it won't be possible to get binary data out of Tk this
way.  Do we need that ability?  How to do it?

For more comments, read the patches@python.org archives.
For documentation read the comments in mymalloc.h and objimpl.h.

(This is not exactly what Vladimir posted to the patches list; I've
made a few changes, and Vladimir sent me a fix in private email for a
problem that only occurs in debug mode.  I'm also holding back on his
change to main.c, which seems unnecessary to me.)

Finally, this long-obsolete module bites the dust.

Change Py_Malloc/Realloc/Free calls to PyMem_Malloc/Realloc/Free +
PyErr_Nomemory on error check.  Py_Malloc c.s. are obsolete.

- When 'import exceptions' fails, don't suggest to use -v to print the traceback;
  this doesn't actually work.
- Remove comment about fallback to string exceptions.
- Remove a PyErr_Occurred() check after all is said and done that can
  never trigger.
- Remove static function newstdexception() which is no longer called.

Spotted by Greg Kochanski <gpk@bell-labs.com>.

Added 'u' and 'u#' tags for PyArg_ParseTuple - these turn a
PyUnicodeObject argument into a Py_UNICODE * buffer, or a Py_UNICODE *
buffer plus a length with the '#'.  Also added an analog to 'U'
for Py_BuildValue.

you pass server information to the constructor.  Error noted by Pedro
Diaz Jimenez <diazjimenez@ctv.es>.

a size of 0 *is* illegal.

Fixes the MBCS codec to work correctly with zero length strings.

Moved to the Compat folder (in case anyone still wants to try MPW building), it hasn't been used for years.

Checkin 2.131 of posixmodule.c changed os.stat on Windows, so that
"/bin/" type notation (trailing backslash) would work on Windows to
be consistent with Unix.

However, the patch broke the simple case of: os.stat("\\")

This did work in 1.5.2, and obviously should!

This patch addresses this, and restores the correct behaviour.

Attached is a set of diffs for the .py compiler that adds support
for the new extended call syntax.

compiler/ast.py:
CallFunc node gets 2 new children to support extended call syntax -
"star_args" (for "*args") and "dstar_args" (for "**args")

compiler/pyassem.py
It appear that self.lnotab is supposed to be responsible for
tracking line numbers, but self.firstlineno was still hanging
around.  Removed self.firstlineno completely.  NOTE - I didnt
actually test that the generated code has the correct line numbers!!

Stack depth tracking appeared a little broken - the checks never
made it beyond the "self.patterns" check - thus, the custom methods
were never called!  Fixed this.

(XXX Jeremy notes: I think this code is still broken because it
doesn't track stack effects across block bounaries.)

Added support for the new extended call syntax opcodes for depth
calculations.

compiler/pycodegen.py

Added support for the new extended call syntax opcodes.

compiler/transformer.py

Added support for the new extended call syntax.

compile.py:
On Windows, use 'nul' instead of '/dev/null'.

test.py:
Use double-quotes for the command-line, as Windows doesnt recognise
singles.

don't think that's what we want.  There was some brief discussion
of this somewhere but I don't recall where.

return 0 (exceptions don't match).  This means that if an ImportError
is raised because exceptions.py can't be imported, the interpreter
will exit "cleanly" with an error message instead of just core
dumping.

PyErr_SetFromErrnoWithFilename(), PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename():
Don't test on Py_UseClassExceptionsFlag.

are no longer supported (i.e. -X option is removed).

_PyBuiltin_Init_1(): Don't call initerrors().  This does mean that it
is possible to raise an ImportError before that exception has been
initialized, say because exceptions.py can't be found, or contains
bogosity.  See changes to errors.c for how this is handled.

_PyBuiltin_Init_2(): Don't test Py_UseClassExceptionsFlag, just go
ahead and initialize the class-based standard exceptions.  If this
fails, we throw a Py_FatalError.

Py_Main(): Remove the 'X' case.

API consistency, but nothing sets it or checks it now.

If you still haven't updated your extension since the Grand Renaming,
you don't deserve Python 1.6. :-)

        Added support for optional parameter explaining the change
        that was made in the specified version.

was allowed to be None.

search() functions didn't even work because _fixflags() isn't
idempotent.  I'm adding another stop-gap measure so that you can at
least use sre.search() and sre.match() with a zero flags arg.

telnetlib is unable to connect to a few telnet daemons because of
improper IAC handling, heres an attached oneliner to reject WILL
messages which will allow many more telnet daemons to work with it,
namely FreeBSD.

Bad % formatting.

the /nodefaultlib: option.

Fixed \OOO interpretation for Unicode objects. \777 now
correctly produces the Unicode character with ordinal 511.

Changed all references to the MAGIC constant to use a global
pyc_magic instead. This global is initially set to MAGIC, but can be
changed by the _PyImport_Init() function to provide for
special features implemented in the compiler which are settable
using command line switches and affect the way PYC files are
generated.

Currently this change is only done for the -U flag.