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Track guessed as N from the test source. The ranker reads frontmatter, so an unset track parks a stub in Track T's queue regardless of what the body says -- correct the track: line if this is wrong.

origin/master has advanced 2 commit(s) since this sha. Re-verify at current HEAD before acting — the callback is tagged to the sha that was tested, which may no longer be the state of the tree.

regression: test-core#src:test/test_nilpy_unbound_builtin_method.npy red at c28e07a89f03 (auto-filed by twatch)

Repro

tools/testmgr.py --tier native --job 'test-core#src:test/test_nilpy_unbound_builtin_method.npy' at c28e07a89f036f56d3bb860e62045b1103e22aae

Range

The named sha c28e07a89f03 CANNOT be the cause — it touches no buildable file (docs / tickets / tstate only). It is the sha that was TESTED, i.e. the upper bound of an untested range; the cause is somewhere below it.

bad c28e07a89f03, last good 0842d9684f7f, 1 commit(s) in range — the watcher narrows this by idle bisect; check tstate/TSTATE.md for the current range.

Log tail

pascal26:21: error: unexpected token
(tail)
Expected: ), but got: x (Kind: 1, Line: 21)
pascal26:21: error: unexpected token
  near: list  append  self  >>> x

Stub ticket: signal only. Track T agent (face 2) enriches or a dev track takes it from the repro line.

Resolution (2026-08-27) — caused by 5a996b4b2, fixed in the same lane

Mine, and Track T found it within the hour. 5a996b4b2 ([[bug-n-the-zero-argument-form-of-a-builtin-type-constructor-is-rejected]]) gave list, tuple and bytes zero-argument overloads in pylib.pas, copying the one bytearray has always had. This dialect lets a parameterless function be called by its BARE NAME, so the bare word list became a complete call and

list.append(self, x)          # how a subclass reaches the base it overrode

parsed as list().append(self, x) — an instance append handed two arguments: Expected: ), but got: x.

The fix, and why the mechanism was wrong rather than the code

Both jobs are green again. The three overloads are reverted and all seven zero-argument constructors now answer in the PARSER, keyed on the name ( ) shape — which by construction cannot capture a bare name, or a name before a .. That is the property the pylib route could not have: an overload is reachable by every spelling that resolves the name.

The containers build their zero value from PyParseListLiteralT, which parses the same ( ) as an empty display, so no new pylib entry point exists whose bare word could be called. list() and bytes() then have to undo that parser's paren-implies-TUPLE stamp with pylist_mark_list — caught because the verification checked type(x).__name__, not just repr.

Both regression tests now carry a matching row in test/test_nilpy_zero_argument_builtin_constructors.npy (a Stack(list) whose methods call list.append and list.__getitem__ unbound), so the shape is gated from the constructor side too and cannot come back through this door.

What it exposed, filed separately

bytearray.append(self, x) was already broken at v383 for exactly this reason, and has been for as long as its overload has existed — nobody had written that spelling. bytearray is deliberately left on its old path here (its overload also stamps FIsByteArray, which the parser arm cannot reproduce without a new pylib entry point, and routing it through changed repr(bytearray()) to b''). [[bug-n-bytearrays-zero-argument-overload-makes-the-bare-name-a-call]]

Note for Track T

The stub's range header was right and useful: it said the named sha c28e07a89f03 "CANNOT be the cause — it touches no buildable file", which pointed straight at 5a996b4b2 one commit below. No bisect was needed.

Gate: make compiler/pascal26 + tools/gate.sh quick GREEN, both named jobs verified by hand against their inline expected strings.