Marc-Andre's third try at this bulk patch seems to work (except that

his copy of test_contains.py seems to be broken -- the lines he
deleted were already absent).  Checkin messages:


New Unicode support for int(), float(), complex() and long().

- new APIs PyInt_FromUnicode() and PyLong_FromUnicode()
- added support for Unicode to PyFloat_FromString()
- new encoding API PyUnicode_EncodeDecimal() which converts
  Unicode to a decimal char* string (used in the above new
  APIs)
- shortcuts for calls like int(<int object>) and float(<float obj>)
- tests for all of the above

Unicode compares and contains checks:
- comparing Unicode and non-string types now works; TypeErrors
  are masked, all other errors such as ValueError during
  Unicode coercion are passed through (note that PyUnicode_Compare
  does not implement the masking -- PyObject_Compare does this)
- contains now works for non-string types too; TypeErrors are
  masked and 0 returned; all other errors are passed through

Better testing support for the standard codecs.

Misc minor enhancements, such as an alias dbcs for the mbcs codec.

Changes:
- PyLong_FromString() now applies the same error checks as
  does PyInt_FromString(): trailing garbage is reported
  as error and not longer silently ignored. The only characters
  which may be trailing the digits are 'L' and 'l' -- these
  are still silently ignored.
- string.ato?() now directly interface to int(), long() and
  float(). The error strings are now a little different, but
  the type still remains the same. These functions are now
  ready to get declared obsolete ;-)
- PyNumber_Int() now also does a check for embedded NULL chars
  in the input string; PyNumber_Long() already did this (and
  still does)

Followed by:

Looks like I've gone a step too far there... (and test_contains.py
seem to have a bug too).

I've changed back to reporting all errors in PyUnicode_Contains()
and added a few more test cases to test_contains.py (plus corrected
the join() NameError).

Objects/floatobject.c

@@ -164,6 +164,22 @@ PyFloat_FromString(v, pend)
 		s = PyString_AS_STRING(v);
 		len = PyString_GET_SIZE(v);
 	}
+	else if (PyUnicode_Check(v)) {
+		char s_buffer[256];
+
+		if (PyUnicode_GET_SIZE(v) >= sizeof(s_buffer)) {
+			PyErr_SetString(PyExc_ValueError,
+				 "float() literal too large to convert");
+			return NULL;
+		}
+		if (PyUnicode_EncodeDecimal(PyUnicode_AS_UNICODE(v), 
+					    PyUnicode_GET_SIZE(v),
+					    s_buffer, 
+					    NULL))
+			return NULL;
+		s = s_buffer;
+		len = strlen(s);
+	}
 	else if (PyObject_AsCharBuffer(v, &s, &len)) {
 		PyErr_SetString(PyExc_TypeError,
 				"float() needs a string argument");