I'm no expert on internals, but I seem to recall that in the past, the string module could be implemented in either C or Python and I think there is a strop module that is related to all this. Could it be that on the Mac, your string processing is using interpreted Python byte code while linux uses c?
I have a suspicion towards Apple-installed Python, although this suspicion may be groundless. I've heard that OSX actually uses the installed Python for some of its work. Once I've deleted the Apple-installed Python totally and it does screw up some of my applications, like I can't click on a doc file and let it fire up OpenOffice to open the doc file. At the same time, I'm not sure of the Apple-installed Python is the same as if you had installed it from Fink, or has it been tweaked...
If Apple-installed Python is a problem for you, you might want to install a version of Python using Fink and see how it compares up...
Maurice -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
