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/warnings.py

@@ -125,11 +125,11 @@ def filterwarnings(action, message="", category=Warning, module="", lineno=0,
     Use assertions to check that all arguments have the right type."""
     assert action in ("error", "ignore", "always", "default", "module",
                       "once"), "invalid action: %s" % `action`
-    assert isinstance(message, types.StringType), "message must be a string"
+    assert isinstance(message, str), "message must be a string"
     assert isinstance(category, types.ClassType), "category must be a class"
     assert issubclass(category, Warning), "category must be a Warning subclass"
-    assert type(module) is types.StringType, "module must be a string"
-    assert type(lineno) is types.IntType and lineno >= 0, \
+    assert isinstance(module, str), "module must be a string"
+    assert isinstance(lineno, int) and lineno >= 0, \
            "lineno must be an int >= 0"
     item = (action, re.compile(message, re.I), category,
             re.compile(module), lineno)