The implementation of dict.fromkeys() assumes that the new dictionary is empty.  That's not the case if we tweak __new__.  Attached example shows 'dictresize(mp, 0)' being called with 'mp' being dictionary of 10 items.  This causes an infinite uninterruptible loop.

I wonder what the semantics should be. I would like to just clear the dictionary that is returned from __new__ but you're also allowed to return custom classes from __new__ which we might not know how to clear.

In case of doubt, see the source code of PyPy :-)

        w_dict = space.call_function(w_type)
        for w_key in space.listview(w_keys):
            space.setitem(w_dict, w_key, w_fill)

(Seriously more compact.)  No clear there...

Joke apart, you could check and complain if the object returned is an instance of 'dict' and is not empty.  Otherwise just accept it.  I think complaining is better than picking either of the two behaviors in this case.

That's still inconsistent, though, since we wouldn't complain if __new__ returns a user defined object.

New changeset a965eac352ec by Benjamin Peterson in branch '3.2':
only fast-path fromkeys() when the constructor returns a empty dict (closes #16345)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/a965eac352ec

New changeset b68da8f2ed95 by Benjamin Peterson in branch '3.3':
merge 3.2 (#16345)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/b68da8f2ed95

New changeset 411d52192062 by Benjamin Peterson in branch 'default':
merge 3.3 (#16345)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/411d52192062

New changeset 6a582cdfee41 by Benjamin Peterson in branch '2.7':
only fast-path fromkeys() when the constructor returns a empty dict (closes #16345)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/6a582cdfee41