[Python-Dev] file system path protocol PEP

[Koos Zevenhoven]

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 8:22 PM, Sjoerd Job Postmus
<sjoerdjob at sjoerdjob.com> wrote:
> I would like to make just 1 comment regarding the question of accepting
> (or not) bytes as output of `os.fspath`.
>
> The whole point of adding `os.fspath` is to make it easier to use Path
> objects. This is in an effort to gain greater adoption of pathlib in
> libraries. Now, this is an excellent idea.
>
> However, if it were to reject bytes, that would mean that when libraries
> start to use pathlib, it would suddenly become harder for people that
> actually need bytes-support to use pathlib.
>
> Now, the claim 'if you need bytes, you should not be using pathlib` is a
> reasonable one. But what if I need bytes *and* a specific library (say,
> image handling, or a web framework, or ...). It's not up to me if that
> library uses pathlib or plain old os.path.join.
>
> Is using surrogate-escapes enough for this case? I myself am not sure,
> (and also not affected), but it sounds to me that rejecting bytes is a
> wrong approach if there is no proper workaround (assuming the use-case
> of pathlib is somewhere deep in library code).
>

This is out of the scope of this PEP and probably a very insignificant
issue (luckily, this is not the pathlib PEP). Surrogates will probably
work and if not, on can "blaim" broken filenames ;).

-- Koos