'<a href="foo" ><img src="bar" / ></a>' wouldn't be parsed right (the problem is '/ >', '/>' worked fine).
We need to change it in python 2.6 (for example the description of youtube videos wouldn't be extracted).
utils is large enough without these compatibility functions.
Everything that is present in newer versions of Python (i.e. with dev Python it's just an import) goes into compat.py .
Everything else (i.e. youtube-dl-specific helpers) goes into utils.py .