(Contributed by Dmitry Vasiliev.)

  timeit, base64, MSVC++ 7.1 build, METH_COEXISTS, and optimizations.

* Put in a comment suggesting an improvement to the rsplit() example.

separaters on str.split() and str.rsplit().

factory functions, so you can call quicktime functions that are implemented
as methods on NULL too.

Still don't allow quicktime functions to return NULL pointers, though: I
think this always signals an error condition.

failure on FreeBSD.

Formerly, the length was only fetched from sequence objects.
Now, any object that reports its length can benefit from pre-sizing.

Formerly, the length was only fetched from sequence objects.
Now, any object that reports its length can benefit from pre-sizing.

Formerly, length data fetched from sequence objects.
Now, any object that reports its length can benefit from pre-sizing.

On one sample timing, it gave a threefold speedup for list(s) where s
was a set object.

Make timings more consistent by temporarily disabling GC.

again.  Removed the following subprojects and folded them into pythoncore,
to match what's being done under VC7.  We *can* build the core DLL
under VC6 again after this:

datetime.dsp
winreg.dsp
parser.dsp
_sre.dsp
_csv.dsp
mmap.dsp
_symtable.dsp

encoding and decoding, including optional case folding and optional
alternative alphabets.

still far away, but a lot closer than it was.

loops to run (default remains 50,000 if no argument is specified).

   than are specified by the buffer size.  The patch calls .__write()
   to ensure that any full blocks are written out.