Use types.StringTypes instead of (types.StringType, types.UnicodeType) --

Michael W. Hudson · Michael W. Hudson · commit 3704644acba4 · 2002-05-20T14:30:06.000Z
works better (at all!) in --disable-unicode builds.

Bugfix candidate, probably.
diff --git a/Lib/urllib2.py b/Lib/urllib2.py
@@ -303,7 +303,7 @@ def _call_chain(self, chain, kind, meth_name, *args):
 
     def open(self, fullurl, data=None):
         # accept a URL or a Request object
-        if isinstance(fullurl, (types.StringType, types.UnicodeType)):
+        if isinstance(fullurl, types.StringTypes):
             req = Request(fullurl, data)
         else:
             req = fullurl
@@ -516,7 +516,7 @@ def __init__(self):
 
     def add_password(self, realm, uri, user, passwd):
         # uri could be a single URI or a sequence
-        if isinstance(uri, (types.StringType, types.UnicodeType)):
+        if isinstance(uri, types.StringTypes):
             uri = [uri]
         uri = tuple(map(self.reduce_uri, uri))
         if not self.passwd.has_key(realm):
