Backported astropy/astropy#968 including updates for Python 2.5.  Will backport this fix to PyFITS 3.1.x and 3.0.x branches


Conflicts:

	CHANGES.txt
	lib/pyfits/file.py

git-svn-id: http://svn6.assembla.com/svn/pyfits/branches/3.1-stable@2352 ed100bfc-0583-0410-97f2-c26b58777a21