The linecache module does not handle packages at all (Guido mentions here that he wrote it before Python had packages: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-September/056870.html).

This seems to cause problems with pdb and pydoc, as illustrated by this example:

$ mkdir pydoc_test
$ cd pydoc_test
$ echo "#" > __init__.py
$ pydoc logging

This gives a traceback due to an out of range index, resulting essentially from ./__init__.py being confused with logging/__init__.py. A line number from the latter is used as an index into a list of the lines from the former.

Patch attached, and a bit more explanation can be seen here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-defaults/+bug/70902