for them in a roundabout way (catching and parsing stderr)

keeps test output clean.

DBError was supposed to be raised.

needs backport to 2.4.x and possibly 2.3.x.

bug #1215432

by Darek Suchojad)

 * the has_key() method was not raising a DBError when a database error
   had occurred. [SF patch id 1212590]
 * added a wrapper for the DBEnv.set_lg_regionmax method [SF patch id 1212590]
 * DBKeyEmptyError now derives from KeyError just like DBNotFoundError.
 * internally everywhere DB_NOTFOUND was checked for has been updated
   to also check for DB_KEYEMPTY.  This fixes the semantics of a couple
   operations on recno and queue databases to be more intuitive and results
   in less unexpected DBKeyEmptyError exceptions being raised.

On more modern linuxes (and probably others) straight 'en_US' isn't a
valid locale. Make the code try a couple of alternates.

backport candidate

[ 1180995 ] binary formats for marshalling floats

Adds 2 new type codes for marshal (binary floats and binary complexes), a
new marshal version (2), updates MAGIC and fiddles the de-serializing of
code objects to be less likely to clobber the real reason for failing if
it fails.

component of the path.

backport candidate

functions written in python.

contributed by <frederic.gobry@epfl.ch>

when the member is available on the platform. (Contributed by
Diego Petteno)

Clarify the role of the chars argument in the strip() methods.

[ 1181301 ] make float packing copy bytes when they can

which hasn't been reviewed, despite numerous threats to check it in
anyway if noone reviews it.  Please read the diff on the checkin list,
at least!

The basic idea is to examine the bytes of some 'probe values' to see if
the current platform is a IEEE 754-ish platform, and if so
_PyFloat_{Pack,Unpack}{4,8} just copy bytes around.

The rest is hair for testing, and tests.