Python 2.2.1c1 (#1, Mar 19 2002, 12:10:26) 
[GCC 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.1 2.96-85)] on linux2
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>>> (0.01+0.01j)**200
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: 0.0 to a negative or complex power


I could trace this back to the routine c_pow() in complexobject.c. It explicitly sets ERANGE for the case that it quoted in the error message, but in my example, ERANGE is set by pow() in line 140 of complexobject.c.

The problem disappears if I link Python with -lieee under Linux, but after the recent discussion I had the impression that Python is not supposed to use -lieee under Linux, for whatever reason.