Now that I know the root cause of the problem, I can write around it as suggested by Steve Holden and Terry Reedy, (and others). In fact, it has helped me in a way as I am thinking not in terms of the easiest solution, (read; the first one that comes to mind), but more effcient and cleaner ways to write a section of code to accomplish the same objective. The key was identifying the root cause which was provided by the error message seen only at the command line level and by contibutors to this post.
Thanks again for everyone's suggestions and expertise. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
