> If you guys think the old code is better in some way, feel free to revert the backport :-)

Hey, it's Guido's code, it must be good :)

My only concern is that this seems to be more of an issue of unspecified behavior rather than a bug and, as such, our general policy is that the status quo wins as far as changing behavior in a maintenance release.  I don't have a really strong feeling one way or another myself; I'm just trying to play devil's advocate on behalf of the user community.  Let's see if anyone else can make a case one way or another.