Improve extended slicing support in builtin types and classes. Specifically:

- Specialcase extended slices that amount to a shallow copy the same way as
   is done for simple slices, in the tuple, string and unicode case.

 - Specialcase step-1 extended slices to optimize the common case for all
   involved types.

 - For lists, allow extended slice assignment of differing lengths as long
   as the step is 1. (Previously, 'l[:2:1] = []' failed even though
   'l[:2] = []' and 'l[:2:None] = []' do not.)

 - Implement extended slicing for buffer, array, structseq, mmap and
   UserString.UserString.

 - Implement slice-object support (but not non-step-1 slice assignment) for
   UserString.MutableString.

 - Add tests for all new functionality.

Lib/test/test_mmap.py

@@ -306,6 +306,40 @@ class MmapTests(unittest.TestCase):
             m[x] = ch = chr(x & 255)
             self.assertEqual(m[x], ch)
 
+    def test_extended_getslice(self):
+        # Test extended slicing by comparing with list slicing.
+        s = "".join(chr(c) for c in reversed(range(256)))
+        m = mmap.mmap(-1, len(s))
+        m[:] = s
+        self.assertEqual(m[:], s)
+        indices = (0, None, 1, 3, 19, 300, -1, -2, -31, -300)
+        for start in indices:
+            for stop in indices:
+                # Skip step 0 (invalid)
+                for step in indices[1:]:
+                    self.assertEqual(m[start:stop:step],
+                                     s[start:stop:step])
+
+    def test_extended_set_del_slice(self):
+        # Test extended slicing by comparing with list slicing.
+        s = "".join(chr(c) for c in reversed(range(256)))
+        m = mmap.mmap(-1, len(s))
+        indices = (0, None, 1, 3, 19, 300, -1, -2, -31, -300)
+        for start in indices:
+            for stop in indices:
+                # Skip invalid step 0
+                for step in indices[1:]:
+                    m[:] = s
+                    self.assertEqual(m[:], s)
+                    L = list(s)
+                    # Make sure we have a slice of exactly the right length,
+                    # but with different data.
+                    data = L[start:stop:step]
+                    data = "".join(reversed(data))
+                    L[start:stop:step] = data
+                    m[start:stop:step] = data
+                    self.assertEquals(m[:], "".join(L))
+
 def test_main():
     run_unittest(MmapTests)