The description of color_pair starts with

curses.color_pair(color_number)

It should be

curses.color_pair(pair_number)

Please explain why you believe this is a mistake.

Good catch! And it is not only documentation issue now. Since color numbers and pair numbers use different range checks, this prevents using this function with pair numbers larger that COLORS (should be accepted up to COLOR_PAIRS-1).

Seems there is also other bug which prevents using pair number 0 (constant white on black).

New changeset 1470edd6131c29b8a09ce012cdfee3afa269d553 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch 'master':
bpo-42681: Fix range checks for color and pair numbers in curses (GH-23874)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/1470edd6131c29b8a09ce012cdfee3afa269d553

New changeset b0ee2b492dbf550fbd2a63b82de0a4dc9d67f32e by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '3.9':
[3.9] bpo-42681: Fix range checks for color and pair numbers in curses (GH-23874). (GH-24077)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/b0ee2b492dbf550fbd2a63b82de0a4dc9d67f32e

This change seems to broke some buildbots. For instance:

https://buildbot.python.org/all/#/builders/119/builds/153


======================================================================
ERROR: test_colors_funcs (test.test_curses.TestCurses)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/dje/cpython-buildarea/3.8.edelsohn-rhel8-z/build/Lib/test/test_curses.py", line 310, in test_colors_funcs
    curses.pair_content(min(curses.COLOR_PAIRS - 1, 0x7fff))
_curses.error: Argument 1 was out of range. (1..COLOR_PAIRS-1)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 28 tests in 0.337s
FAILED (errors=1)
1 test failed again:
    test_curses
== Tests result: FAILURE then FAILURE ==

> This change seems to broke some buildbots.

Yep, see also bpo-42789.

New changeset 82794cacc6073af9bc2b792a5ee21397f4c9037f by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '3.8':
[3.8] [3.9] bpo-42681: Fix range checks for color and pair numbers in curses (GH-23874). (GH-24077) (GH-24079)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/82794cacc6073af9bc2b792a5ee21397f4c9037f

New changeset 59f9b4e4509be67494f3d45489fa55523175ff69 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch 'master':
bpo-42681: Fix test_curses failures related to color pairs (GH-24089)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/59f9b4e4509be67494f3d45489fa55523175ff69

New changeset 9b3a53a8264d4c469a3f3d8c037e74c010be3e5c by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '3.9':
[3.9] bpo-42681: Fix test_curses failures related to color pairs (GH-24089) (GH-24113)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/9b3a53a8264d4c469a3f3d8c037e74c010be3e5c

New changeset e2c847e0c518dd6c63a898b8265ba54b71548bd6 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '3.8':
[3.8] [3.9] bpo-42681: Fix test_curses failures related to color pairs (GH-24089) (GH-24113) (GH-24116)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/e2c847e0c518dd6c63a898b8265ba54b71548bd6

Well, a simple documentation issue has grown into large and complex changes that fix several bugs.

* Incorrect parameter name in color_pair().
* Incorrectly documented ranges for color and pair numbers.
* Based on incorrect documentation, incorrect checks was implemented in the code.
* It was not caught earlier because most tests were skipped on buildbots.
* BTW ncurses accepts some values outside of the documented ranges.
* But ncurses 6.1 does not accept all values in the documented ranges.
* There were other minor bugs introduced in issue36982.

Thanks a lot Serhiy for the fantastic work!

Great work, thank you Serhiy!