Don't decode unicode strings.
This does not work with python2.3 and is probably not useful anyway with 2.4.
#!/bin/sh
echo 'raise Exception("bit bucket overflow")' > badext.py
abspath=`pwd`/badext.py
echo '[extensions]' >> $HGRCPATH
echo "gpg =" >> $HGRCPATH
echo "hgext.gpg =" >> $HGRCPATH
echo "badext = $abspath" >> $HGRCPATH
hg -q help help