[Python-Dev] Removal of Win32 ANSI API (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Fri Nov 12 20:44:34 CET 2010

I'm not talking about Windows obviously. POSIX filenames are natively bytes, so if you get a bytes filename from an external source, it makes sense to reuse the bytes form.

I think it would be a mistake to allow bytes filenames under POSIX but not under Windows. It makes porting harder.

Not really. People who want to write portable code should use Unicode filenames everywhere, not byte filenames.

- tar stores filenames... in the locale encoding (except for PAX format which uses utf-8) So bytes filenames are useful at least for tar.

No, they are not. The tarfile module decodes all file names on its own, IIUC.

Regards, Martin

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