ideally that may be true.

but its quite frustrating testing/developing new py3k software when many
modules/extensions we take for granted in 2.x isn't available.  in the
meantime, this patch serves as a very convenient stopgap for developers
(even w/ its bugs), for writing py3k migration code in 2.x (& access to
all its extensions)

for example, its a difficult task to port a big project like numpy to
py3k all @ once.  but this patch could allow u to piece-wise transform
it, one script @ a time, to py3k language syntax compliance.