- Check the correct variable (str_obj, not str) for NULL
 - sep_len was already verified it wasn't 0

Fix compiler warning (and whitespace) on Mac OS 10.4.  (A lot of this code looked duplicated, I wonder if a utility function could help reduce the duplication here.)

set_exc_info(), reset_exc_info():  By exploiting the
likely (who knows?) invariant that when an exception's
`type` is NULL, its `value` and `traceback` are also NULL,
save some cycles in heavily-executed code.

This is a "a kronar saved is a kronar earned" patch:  the
speedup isn't reliably measurable, but it obviously does
reduce the operation count in the normal (no exception
raised) path through PyEval_EvalFrameEx().

The tim-exc_sanity branch tries to push this harder, but
is still blowing up (at least in part due to pre-existing
subtle bugs that appear to have no other visible
consequences!).

Not a bugfix candidate.

patterns in a string, only the number needed by the max limit.

find

find helpers; updated unicodeobject to use stringlib_count

  (If compiled without FAST search support, changed the pre-memcmp test
   to check the last character as well as the first.  This gave a 25%
   speedup for my test case.)

Rewrote the split algorithms so they stop when maxsplit gets to 0.
Previously they did a string match first then checked if the maxsplit
was reached.  The new way prevents a needless string search.

from long ago and far away. Stop calling this pybench 1.4 because it
isn't. Remove the empty test, which was a bad idea.

feel free to add more tests and improve the documentation.

  invalid file paths for the built-in import machinery which leads to
  fewer open calls on startup.

  Also fix issue with PEP 302 style import hooks which lead to more open()
  calls than necessary.

the illusion of negative run times. Halt with an error if
run times go below 10 ms, indicating that results will be
unreliable.

broken, someone would have noticed by now ;-)