into the relevant path modules.  See patch #686397.

Fixes #661762, bugfix candidate.

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.

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.

for me on linux because of the inconsistent whitespace.

- islink() now returns true for alias files
- walk() no longer follows aliases while traversing
- realpath() implemented, returning an alias-free pathname.

As this could conceivably break existing code I think it isn't a bugfix candidate.

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'

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.

(except for : and volume:, where they are needed).

characters.

Similar to an old bug in ntpath.py.

who writes:

Here is batch 2, as a big collection of CVS context diffs.
Along with moving comments into docstrings, i've added a
couple of missing docstrings and attempted to make sure more
module docstrings begin with a one-line summary.

I did not add docstrings to the methods in profile.py for
fear of upsetting any careful optimizations there, though
i did move class documentation into class docstrings.

The convention i'm using is to leave credits/version/copyright
type of stuff in # comments, and move the rest of the descriptive
stuff about module usage into module docstrings.  Hope this is
okay.

	Constants from stat module were imported using "import *";
	don't access them via stat.ST_*!

	Reported by that other vR.  ;-)

manipulation routines can be used on non-Mac platforms (e.g. to
manipulate pathnames in a Mac specific archive).