Merged revisions 83352,83355-83358,83362,83366,83368-83369 via svnmerge from
svn+ssh://svn.python.org/python/branches/py3k

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  r83352 | georg.brandl | 2010-07-31 20:11:07 +0200 (Sa, 31 Jul 2010) | 1 line

  #9440: Remove borderline test case that fails based on unpredictable conditions such as compiler flags.
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  r83355 | georg.brandl | 2010-07-31 21:17:11 +0200 (Sa, 31 Jul 2010) | 1 line

  Fix bad merge: test_support -> support.
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  r83356 | georg.brandl | 2010-07-31 21:29:15 +0200 (Sa, 31 Jul 2010) | 1 line

  Remove trailing whitespace.
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  r83357 | georg.brandl | 2010-07-31 21:59:55 +0200 (Sa, 31 Jul 2010) | 1 line

  #5778: document that sys.version can contain a newline.
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  r83358 | georg.brandl | 2010-07-31 22:05:31 +0200 (Sa, 31 Jul 2010) | 1 line

  #9442: do not document a specific format for sys.version; rather refer to version_info and the platform module.
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  r83362 | georg.brandl | 2010-07-31 23:12:15 +0200 (Sa, 31 Jul 2010) | 1 line

  #8910: add a file explaining why Lib/test/data is there.
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  r83366 | georg.brandl | 2010-07-31 23:26:40 +0200 (Sa, 31 Jul 2010) | 1 line

  There always is a False and True now.
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  r83368 | georg.brandl | 2010-07-31 23:40:15 +0200 (Sa, 31 Jul 2010) | 1 line

  #7909: the prefixes \\.\ and \\?\ indicate special Windows paths, do not try to manipulate them.  See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247%28VS.85%29.aspx for details.
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  r83369 | georg.brandl | 2010-07-31 23:41:42 +0200 (Sa, 31 Jul 2010) | 1 line

  Fix "Berkeley" name.
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diff --git a/Lib/ntpath.py b/Lib/ntpath.py
index 1cec895..6aa1e85 100644
--- a/Lib/ntpath.py
+++ b/Lib/ntpath.py
@@ -70,6 +70,12 @@
     else:
         return ':'
 
+def _get_special(path):
+    if isinstance(path, bytes):
+        return (b'\\\\.\\', b'\\\\?\\')
+    else:
+        return ('\\\\.\\', '\\\\?\\')
+
 # Normalize the case of a pathname and map slashes to backslashes.
 # Other normalizations (such as optimizing '../' away) are not done
 # (this is done by normpath).
@@ -508,6 +514,13 @@
     """Normalize path, eliminating double slashes, etc."""
     sep = _get_sep(path)
     dotdot = _get_dot(path) * 2
+    special_prefixes = _get_special(path)
+    if path.startswith(special_prefixes):
+        # in the case of paths with these prefixes:
+        # \\.\ -> device names
+        # \\?\ -> literal paths
+        # do not do any normalization, but return the path unchanged
+        return path
     path = path.replace(_get_altsep(path), sep)
     prefix, path = splitdrive(path)