(Basic approach and test concept by Tim Peters.)

* Improved the hash to reduce collisions.
* Added the torture test to the test suite.

Including changes from Ian Holsman to build under Red Hat 7.3.
Fixing some problems with the /usr/local path change.

The disutils sdist command now ignores .svn directories.

mapping tests as possible in mapping_test.py and reuse the tests in
test_dict.py, test_userdict.py, test_weakref.py, test_os.py and test_shelve.py.
From SF patch #736962.

Add this default to weakref.WeakValueDictionary.setdefault()
and weakref.WeakKeyDictionary.setdefault() too.

Add this default to UserDict.DictMixin.setdefault() too.

[ 899109 ] 1==float('nan')

which can now finally be closed, I think.

[ 728330 ] Don't define _SGAPI on IRIX

The Right Thing would be nice, for now this'll do.  At least it isn't
going to break anything *other* than IRIX...

readline module is loaded.

* rename a variable for clarity

* Factored out common code to a single private function.
* Use str.join() instead of + concatenation
* Loop over elements directly instead of using indexing
* Use % operator for formatting

expression.

* Put in a brief, example driven tutorial entry.
* Use better examples in whatsnew24.tex.