SF bug 115831 and Ping's SF patch 101751, 0.0**-2.0 returns inf rather than raise ValueError. Checked in the patch as far as it went, but also changed all of ints, longs and floats to raise ZeroDivisionError instead when raising 0 to a negative number. This is what 754-inspired stds require, as the "true result" is an infinity obtained from finite operands, i.e. it's a singularity. Also changed float pow to not be so timid about using its square-and-multiply algorithm. Note that what math.pow does is unrelated to what builtin pow does, and will still vary by platform.

--- a/Objects/longobject.c	Thu Oct 05 22:10:33 2000 +0000
+++ b/Objects/longobject.c	Fri Oct 06 00:36:09 2000 +0000
@@ -1244,8 +1244,12 @@
 	
 	size_b = b->ob_size;
 	if (size_b < 0) {
-		PyErr_SetString(PyExc_ValueError,
-				"long integer to the negative power");
+		if (a->ob_size)
+			PyErr_SetString(PyExc_ValueError,
+					"long integer to a negative power");
+		else
+			PyErr_SetString(PyExc_ZeroDivisionError,
+					"zero to a negative power");
 		return NULL;
 	}
 	z = (PyLongObject *)PyLong_FromLong(1L);