[Python-Dev] New proposition for Python3 bytes filename issue

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> The default behaviour should be to use unicode and raise an error if 
> conversion to unicode fails. It should also be possible to use bytes using 
> bytes arguments and optional arguments (for getcwd).

I'm still opposed to allowing bytes as file names at all in 3k. Python
should really strive for providing a uniform datatype, and that should
be the character string type.

For applications that cannot trust that the conversion works always
correctly on POSIX systems, sys.setfilesystemencoding should be
provided.

In the long run, need for explicit calls to this function should be
reduced, by
a) systems getting more consistent in their file name encoding, and
b) Python providing better defaults for detecting the file name
   encoding, and better round-trip support for non-encodable bytes.
Part b) is probably out-of-scope for 3.0 now, but should be reconsidered
for 3.1

Regards,
Martin