I found the problem when i install a small tool which I wrote on the
each machine in the company.the problem is simplified as follows:
there are three files
1./home/share/temp/a a regular file
2./home/share/a.lnk which is symbolic link to the /home/share/temp/a
3./home/share/temp/test.py whose contents are
#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import sys
print sys.version
print os.uname()
print os.path.realpath("/home/share/temp/../a.lnk")
print os.path.abspath("/home/share/temp/../a.lnk")

and I ran the python script on two different machines,but the version
of python interpreters are the same,and both of them are 64 bits machine,
but the result of os.path.realpath is different,one is
--------------------------------------------------------
2.3.4 (#1, Feb 2 2005, 11:44:13)
[GCC 3.4.3 20041212 (Red Hat 3.4.3-9.EL4)]
('Linux', 'tc-com-test00.tc.baidu.com', '2.6.9-52bs', '#2 SMP Fri Jan 26
13:34:38 CST 2007', 'x86_64')
/home/share/a.lnk
/home/share/a.lnk

another is
-----------------------------------------------------------
2.3.4 (#1, Dec 11 2007, 05:28:55)
[GCC 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-9)]
('Linux', 'tc-ecom-dev00.tc.baidu.com', '2.6.9-52bs', '#2 SMP Fri Jan 26
13:34:38 CST 2007', 'x86_64')
/home/share/temp/temp/a
/home/share/a.lnk

But obviously the first one os.path.realpath(...) should be
/home/share/temp/a instead of /home/share/a.lnk
and the second on os.path.realpath(...) should also be
/home/share/temp/a instaed of /home/share/temp/temp/a

An issue with Python 2.3, can this be closed or is it still a problem with Python 2.7 or any of the Python 3 versions?

No such issue on python 2.6, 2.7, 3.2.

>>> print(os.path.realpath('/Users/l0nwlf/Desktop/tmp/../decotest.lnk'))
/Users/l0nwlf/Desktop/decotest.lnk
I think this issue can be closed.
However, I came with a different issue while testing on 2.6, trunk and 3.2.

>>> print(os.path.realpath('~/Desktop/tmp/../decotest.lnk'))
/Volumes/CoreHD/py3k/~/Desktop/decotest.lnk

Your different issue looks like a correct result to me. ~ is not automatically expanded.

By different issue I meant expected but non-useful output.
Although it does exactly what it is supposed to do, but expanding tilde (~) to $HOME could have been the default behavior(more user-friendly I should say). Don't know if that is worth it but the scale seems more on the negative side.

I can confirm this works correctly on 32 bit Linux under 2.6.4. Since it is unlikely the width matters to this issue I'm going to close it. If anyone has a case where it fails we can reopen.

Somebody long ago made the decision that ~ is only expanded if you call expanduser. I don't think this decision is likely to get changed.