No need to assign the results of expressions used only for side effects.
diff --git a/Lib/urllib.py b/Lib/urllib.py
index 0951237..d4740e9 100644
--- a/Lib/urllib.py
+++ b/Lib/urllib.py
@@ -234,7 +234,7 @@
                 hdrs = fp.info()
                 fp.close()
                 return url2pathname(splithost(url1)[1]), hdrs
-            except IOError, msg:
+            except IOError:
                 pass
         fp = self.open(url, data)
         try:
@@ -1277,7 +1277,7 @@
             else:
                 try:
                     # is this a sufficient test for sequence-ness?
-                    x = len(v)
+                    len(v)
                 except TypeError:
                     # not a sequence
                     v = quote_plus(str(v))