Remove uses of the string and types modules:

x in string.whitespace => x.isspace()
type(x) in types.StringTypes => isinstance(x, basestring)
isinstance(x, types.StringTypes) => isinstance(x, basestring)
type(x) is types.StringType => isinstance(x, str)
type(x) == types.StringType => isinstance(x, str)
string.split(x, ...) => x.split(...)
string.join(x, y) => y.join(x)
string.zfill(x, ...) => x.zfill(...)
string.count(x, ...) => x.count(...)
hasattr(types, "UnicodeType") => try: unicode except NameError:
type(x) != types.TupleTuple => not isinstance(x, tuple)
isinstance(x, types.TupleType) => isinstance(x, tuple)
type(x) is types.IntType => isinstance(x, int)

Do not mention the string module in the rlcompleter docstring.

This partially applies SF patch http://www.python.org/sf/562373
(with basestring instead of string). (It excludes the changes to
unittest.py and does not change the os.stat stuff.)

Lib/string.py

@@ -190,10 +190,6 @@ def rfind(s, *args):
 _float = float
 _int = int
 _long = long
-try:
-    _StringTypes = (str, unicode)
-except NameError:
-    _StringTypes = (str,)
 
 # Convert string to float
 def atof(s):
@@ -279,7 +275,7 @@ def zfill(x, width):
     of the specified width.  The string x is never truncated.
 
     """
-    if not isinstance(x, _StringTypes):
+    if not isinstance(x, basestring):
         x = repr(x)
     return x.zfill(width)