title: Python 2.x gotchas and landmines
body: <p>The purpose of my question is to strengthen my knowledge base with Python and get a better picture of it, which includes knowing its faults and surprises.  To keep things specific, I'm only interested in the CPython interpreter.</p>
  
  <p>I'm looking for something similar to what learned from my <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/512120/php-landmines-in-general">PHP landmines</a>
  question where some of the answers were well known to me but a couple were borderline horrifying.</p>
  
  <p>Update:
     Apparently one maybe two people are upset that I asked a question that's already partially answered outside of Stack Overflow.  As some sort of compromise here's the URL
  <a href="http://www.ferg.org/projects/python_gotchas.html" rel="noreferrer">http://www.ferg.org/projects/python_gotchas.html</a></p>
  
  <p>Note that one or two answers here already are original from what was written on the site referenced above.</p>