[Guido]
> ...
> (2) Will the Windows input routine still accept the *old*
> representations for INF and NAN?  IMO that's important (a) so as to be
> able to read old pickles or marshalled data, (b) so as to be able to
> read data files written by C programs.

Ha!  You're such an optimist ;-)  The remarkable truth is that Windows
has never been able to read its own representations for INF and NAN:

'1.#INF'
>>> float(_)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: invalid literal for float(): 1.#INF
>>> repr(nan)
'-1.#IND'
>>> float(_)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: invalid literal for float(): -1.#IND

This has nothing to do with Python -- same thing from C, etc.