Walter, I'm 99% sure this is your fault:

gcc -c -DNDEBUG -g -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -I.
-I../Include -DHAVE_CONFIG_H  -o Objects/stringobject.o
../Objects/stringobject.c
../Objects/stringobject.c: In function `do_argstrip':
../Objects/stringobject.c:1461: warning: implicit
declaration of function `PyUnicode_FromObject'
../Objects/stringobject.c:1461: warning: initialization
makes pointer from integer without a cast
../Objects/stringobject.c:1465: warning: implicit
declaration of function `_PyUnicode_XStrip'
../Objects/stringobject.c:1465: `PyUnicodeObject'
undeclared (first use in this function)
../Objects/stringobject.c:1465: (Each undeclared
identifier is reported only once
../Objects/stringobject.c:1465: for each function it
appears in.)
../Objects/stringobject.c:1465: parse error before `)'

Please fix.

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You're 99% correct!

Fixed in stringobject 2.162 and 2.147.6.5 (for the
release22-maint branch).

The docstring for strip, lstrip and rstrip still
mention unicode. Should this be fixed too?

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My cronjob thanks you :)

I wouldn't bother fixing the docstrings, myself, so I'll
close this.

Now to get StringIO working... (currently testing patch).