Work around AIX shell builtin printf not handling \NNN.
On AIX, ksh builtin printf does not understand \NNN. Some tests use this
to generate test data, and so fail on AIX. Rework these tests to use python
to generate the correct characters. This fixes the tests on AIX and should
be more generally portable.
% prepare repo
adding a
% import patch
applying patch from stdin
patching file a
Hunk #1 succeeded at 43 (offset 34 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 87 (offset 34 lines).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 109 (offset 34 lines).
a
% compare imported changes against reference file