the mad patcher strikes again:

-- added pickling support (only works if sre is imported)

-- fixed wordsize problems in engine
   (instead of casting literals down to the character size,
   cast characters up to the literal size (same as the code
   word size).  this prevents false hits when you're matching
   a unicode pattern against an 8-bit string. (unfortunately,
   this broke another test, but I think the test should be
   changed in this case; more on that on python-dev)

-- added sre.purge function
   (unofficial, clears the cache)
diff --git a/Lib/sre_parse.py b/Lib/sre_parse.py
index d3dbe00..fb954e9 100644
--- a/Lib/sre_parse.py
+++ b/Lib/sre_parse.py
@@ -19,6 +19,9 @@
 # FIXME: should be 65535, but the arraymodule is still broken
 MAXREPEAT = 32767
 
+# FIXME: same here
+CHARMASK = 0x7fff
+
 SPECIAL_CHARS = ".\\[{()*+?^$|"
 REPEAT_CHARS  = "*+?{"
 
@@ -30,14 +33,14 @@
 WHITESPACE = string.whitespace
 
 ESCAPES = {
-    r"\a": (LITERAL, chr(7)),
-    r"\b": (LITERAL, chr(8)),
-    r"\f": (LITERAL, chr(12)),
-    r"\n": (LITERAL, chr(10)),
-    r"\r": (LITERAL, chr(13)),
-    r"\t": (LITERAL, chr(9)),
-    r"\v": (LITERAL, chr(11)),
-    r"\\": (LITERAL, "\\")
+    r"\a": (LITERAL, 7),
+    r"\b": (LITERAL, 8),
+    r"\f": (LITERAL, 12),
+    r"\n": (LITERAL, 10),
+    r"\r": (LITERAL, 13),
+    r"\t": (LITERAL, 9),
+    r"\v": (LITERAL, 11),
+    r"\\": (LITERAL, ord("\\"))
 }
 
 CATEGORIES = {
@@ -176,9 +179,6 @@
 
 def isname(name):
     # check that group name is a valid string
-    # FIXME: <fl> this code is really lame.  should use a regular
-    # expression instead, but I seem to have certain bootstrapping
-    # problems here ;-)
     if not isident(name[0]):
         return 0
     for char in name:
@@ -209,16 +209,14 @@
             while source.next in HEXDIGITS:
                 escape = escape + source.get()
             escape = escape[2:]
-            # FIXME: support unicode characters!
-            return LITERAL, chr(int(escape[-4:], 16) & 0xff)
+            return LITERAL, int(escape[-4:], 16) & CHARMASK
         elif str(escape[1:2]) in OCTDIGITS:
             while source.next in OCTDIGITS:
                 escape = escape + source.get()
             escape = escape[1:]
-            # FIXME: support unicode characters!
-            return LITERAL, chr(int(escape[-6:], 8) & 0xff)
+            return LITERAL, int(escape[-6:], 8) & CHARMASK
         if len(escape) == 2:
-            return LITERAL, escape[1]
+            return LITERAL, ord(escape[1])
     except ValueError:
         pass
     raise error, "bogus escape: %s" % repr(escape)
@@ -236,8 +234,7 @@
             while source.next in HEXDIGITS:
                 escape = escape + source.get()
             escape = escape[2:]
-            # FIXME: support unicode characters!
-            return LITERAL, chr(int(escape[-4:], 16) & 0xff)
+            return LITERAL, int(escape[-4:], 16) & CHARMASK
         elif escape[1:2] in DIGITS:
             while 1:
                 group = _group(escape, state.groups)
@@ -251,17 +248,14 @@
                 else:
                     break
             escape = escape[1:]
-            # FIXME: support unicode characters!
-            return LITERAL, chr(int(escape[-6:], 8) & 0xff)
+            return LITERAL, int(escape[-6:], 8) & CHARMASK
         if len(escape) == 2:
-            return LITERAL, escape[1]
+            return LITERAL, ord(escape[1])
     except ValueError:
         pass
     raise error, "bogus escape: %s" % repr(escape)
 
-
 def _branch(pattern, items):
-
     # form a branch operator from a set of items
 
     subpattern = SubPattern(pattern)
@@ -327,7 +321,7 @@
                 continue
 
         if this and this[0] not in SPECIAL_CHARS:
-            subpattern.append((LITERAL, this))
+            subpattern.append((LITERAL, ord(this)))
 
         elif this == "[":
             # character set
@@ -345,7 +339,7 @@
                 elif this and this[0] == "\\":
                     code1 = _class_escape(source, this)
                 elif this:
-                    code1 = LITERAL, this
+                    code1 = LITERAL, ord(this)
                 else:
                     raise error, "unexpected end of regular expression"
                 if source.match("-"):
@@ -353,17 +347,15 @@
                     this = source.get()
                     if this == "]":
                         set.append(code1)
-                        set.append((LITERAL, "-"))
+                        set.append((LITERAL, ord("-")))
                         break
                     else:
                         if this[0] == "\\":
                             code2 = _class_escape(source, this)
                         else:
-                            code2 = LITERAL, this
+                            code2 = LITERAL, ord(this)
                         if code1[0] != LITERAL or code2[0] != LITERAL:
                             raise error, "illegal range"
-                        if len(code1[1]) != 1 or len(code2[1]) != 1:
-                            raise error, "illegal range"
                         set.append((RANGE, (code1[1], code2[1])))
                 else:
                     if code1[0] is IN:
@@ -605,17 +597,16 @@
                         break
                 if not code:
                     this = this[1:]
-                    # FIXME: support unicode characters!
-                    code = LITERAL, chr(int(this[-6:], 8) & 0xff)
+                    code = LITERAL, int(this[-6:], 8) & CHARMASK
                 a(code)
             else:
                 try:
                     a(ESCAPES[this])
                 except KeyError:
                     for c in this:
-                        a((LITERAL, c))
+                        a((LITERAL, ord(c)))
         else:
-            a((LITERAL, this))
+            a((LITERAL, ord(this)))
     return p
 
 def expand_template(template, match):
@@ -623,12 +614,17 @@
     # code instead
     p = []
     a = p.append
+    sep = match.string[:0]
+    if type(sep) is type(""):
+	char = chr
+    else:
+	char = unichr
     for c, s in template:
         if c is LITERAL:
-            a(s)
+            a(char(s))
         elif c is MARK:
             s = match.group(s)
             if s is None:
                 raise error, "empty group"
             a(s)
-    return match.string[:0].join(p)
+    return sep.join(p)