(merged 3.2 fix)

a ctypes build failure with clang.

and pickling compatibility.

strings with whitespaces, backslashes or unbalanced braces.

strings with whitespaces, backslashes or unbalanced braces.

in any mapping, not only in an unicode string.

in any mapping, not only in an unicode string.

There is no guarantee that NULL is aligned.

fix for previous commit related to issue 10527 which didn't have the intended effect as per http://bugs.python.org/issue10527#msg179895

connections on Windows.

Issue #16922: fixed findtext() to return empty Unicode string instead of empty bytes object when there's no text.

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.