Index: Doc/library/pwd.rst
===================================================================
--- Doc/library/pwd.rst	(revision 68342)
+++ Doc/library/pwd.rst	(working copy)
@@ -32,7 +32,8 @@
 | 6     | ``pw_shell``  | User command interpreter    |
 +-------+---------------+-----------------------------+
 
-The uid and gid items are integers, all others are strings. :exc:`KeyError` is
+The uid and gid items are integers, all others are strings produced by
+decoding the relevant structure members as Latin-1 text. :exc:`KeyError` is
 raised if the entry asked for cannot be found.
 
 .. note::
Index: Modules/pwdmodule.c
===================================================================
--- Modules/pwdmodule.c	(revision 68342)
+++ Modules/pwdmodule.c	(working copy)
@@ -38,8 +38,9 @@
 Password database entries are reported as 7-tuples containing the following\n\
 items from the password database (see `<pwd.h>'), in order:\n\
 pw_name, pw_passwd, pw_uid, pw_gid, pw_gecos, pw_dir, pw_shell.\n\
-The uid and gid items are integers, all others are strings. An\n\
-exception is raised if the entry asked for cannot be found.");
+The uid and gid items are integers, all others are strings produced by\n\
+decoding the relevant structure members as Latin-1 text. KeyError is\n\
+raised if the entry asked for cannot be found.");
 
       
 static int initialized;
@@ -50,7 +51,7 @@
 {
   if (val) {
 	  PyObject *o =
-		PyUnicode_DecodeUnicodeEscape(val, strlen(val), "strict");
+		PyUnicode_DecodeLatin1(val, strlen(val), NULL);
 	  PyStructSequence_SET_ITEM(v, i, o);
   }
   else {