Newbie question about text encoding

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 5:34 AM, Dan Sommers <dan at tombstonezero.net> wrote:
> I think we're all agreeing:  not all file systems are the same, and
> Python doesn't smooth out all of the bumps, even for something that
> seems as simple as displaying the names of files in a directory.  And
> that's *after* we've agreed that filesystems contain files in
> hierarchical directories.

I think you and I are in agreement. No idea about Marko, I'm still not
entirely sure what he's saying.

Python can't smooth out all of the bumps in file systems, any more
than Unicode can smooth out the bumps in natural language, or TCP can
smooth out the bumps in IP. The abstraction layers help, but every now
and then they leak, and you have to cope with the underlying mess.

ChrisA