path.  Also clarifies UNC handling and adds appropriate tests.

Applies patch #988607 to fix bug #980327.  Thanks Paul Moore.

(From SF patch #810751)

backport candidate

- 'os2' references in ntpath.py relate to the VACPP port, not the EMX port;
- the VACPP port uses the same defpath as all other ntpath.py supported
  platforms except 'ce'.

into the relevant path modules.  See patch #686397.

Also added realpath = abspath for os2emx, similar to windows/mac
which also don't really implement realpath.

Backport candidate, I think?

Document that getatime and getmtime may return floats.

imported on systems other than Windows, and in particular is imported
by test___all__; the compile farm reported that all Linux tests failed
due to this; isn't anyone in PythonDevLand running CVS on Linux?!).

sys.getwindowsversion() on Windows (new enahanced Tim-proof <wink>
version), and fix test_pep277.py in a few minor ways.
Including doc and NEWS entries.

ntpath.join('a', '') was producing 'a' instead of 'a\\' as in 2.1.
Impossible to guess what was ever *intended*, but since split('a\\')
produces ('a', ''), I think it's best if join('a', '') gives 'a\\' back.

We have 5 implementations of walk(), and 5 different docstrings.  Combined
'em.  Let's see how long it takes before they're all different again!

   Once upon a time, I put together a little function
   that tries to find the canonical filename for a given
   pathname on POSIX. I've finally gotten around to
   turning it into a proper patch with documentation.
   On non-POSIX, I made it an alias for 'abspath', as
   that's the behavior on POSIX when no symlinks are
   encountered in the path.

   Example:
   >>> os.path.realpath('/usr/bin/X11/X')
   '/usr/X11R6/bin/X'

I actually rewrote normpath quite a bit:  it had no test cases, and as
soon as I starting writing some I found several cases that didn't make
sense.

special cases.  test_pkg works again on Windows.

d:/whatever instead of /whatever.  While I'm afraid changing isabs()
to be *consistent* with this would break lots of code, it makes
best sense for join() to do it this way.  Thanks to Alex Martelli for
pushing back on this one!

This is a Windows-specific glitch that's really due to that, e.g.,
ntpath.join("c:", "/abc") returned "/abc" instead of "c:/abc".  Made
join smarter.
Bugfix candidate.

Add support for Windows using "mbcs" as the default Unicode encoding when dealing with the file system.  As discussed on python-dev and in patch 410465.

Use != instead of <> since <> is documented as "obsolescent".
Use "is" and "is not" when comparing with None or type objects.

Never assume that os.sep is for the module-specific platform; use the
right separator character directly.
Fix some minor style consistency nits.

"a:b", not "a:/b".  Similar change was made to posixmodule.c earlier.

Fix for Bug #110673: os.abspatth() now always returns os.getcwd() on Windows, if an empty path is specified.  It previously did not if an empty path was delegated to win32api.GetFullPathName())

* case insensitive comparison

characters.

getatime() returned the mtime instead of the atime.
Similar to an old bug in posixpath.py.

imported; in that case, abspath is replaced by a fallback version.