[Python-Dev] Bytes path support

[Benjamin Peterson]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2014, at 10:31, Ben Hoyt wrote:
> > The official policy is that we want them [support for bytes paths in stdlib functions] to go away, but reality so far has not budged. We will continue to hold our breath though. :-)
> 
> Does that mean that new APIs should explicitly not support bytes? I'm
> thinking of os.scandir() (PEP 471), which I'm implementing at the
> moment. I was originally going to make it support bytes so it was
> compatible with listdir, but maybe that's a bad idea. Bytes paths are
> essentially broken on Windows.

Bytes paths are "essential" on Unix, though, so I don't think we should
create new low-level APIs that don't support bytes.