I fixed the specific complaint but left the (many) large issues untouched.
See the (very long) bug report discussion for why:
http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&group_id=5470&bug_id=110624
Note that while I left the interface to the undocumented public API function
PyFloat_FromString alone, its 2nd argument is useless. From a comment block
in the code:
RED_FLAG 22-Sep-2000 tim
PyFloat_FromString's pend argument is braindead. Prior to this RED_FLAG,
1. If v was a regular string, *pend was set to point to its terminating
null byte. That's useless (the caller can find that without any
help from this function!).
2. If v was a Unicode string, or an object convertible to a character
buffer, *pend was set to point into stack trash (the auto temp
vector holding the character buffer). That was downright dangerous.
Since we can't change the interface of a public API function, pend is
still supported but now *officially* useless: if pend is not NULL,
*pend is set to NULL.