Python 2.5 and Unicode on MacOS

[Michael J. Fromberger]

I'm not sure whether this is a bug, or a feature that I do not fully 
understand.  I would therefore appreciate some advice, if you have any, 
on the following problem:

I have just installed Python 2.5 (release) under MacOS 10.4.7 ("Tiger").  
Unfortunately, the unit test "test_unicodefile.py" (in Lib/tests/) 
exhibits a warning when invoked, as shown here:

[Lib/test] % python2.5 test_unicode_file.py
test_directories (__main__.TestUnicodeFiles) ... ok
test_unicode_file.py:103: UnicodeWarning: Unicode equal comparison 
failed to convert both arguments to Unicode - interpreting them as being 
unequal
  filename1==filename2
test_equivalent_files (__main__.TestUnicodeFiles) ... ok
test_single_files (__main__.TestUnicodeFiles) ... ok

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 0.252s

As you can see, the unit tests appear to pass, but I suspect there is a 
hidden problem, as a subsequent build of the latest version of 
BeautifulSoup now fails its unit tests, citing the same warning.  I 
can't tell whether this is a problem with the way BeautifulSoup is doing 
things, or whether there is a more general problem with Unicode support 
in the MacOS build of Python 2.5.

For reference, I have done a framework build of Python, and it seems to 
work fine for everything else I have tried.  Do you have any idea what 
might be causing this trouble?  I'd be grateful for your insights.

Cheers,
-M

-- 
Michael J. Fromberger             | Lecturer, Dept. of Computer Science
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sting/  | Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA