Trouble with version 3.8

[Terry Reedy]

On 6/1/2020 4:54 PM, Jim Parinisi via Python-list wrote:
>   
>   I had been using python 3.6 on two computers with windows 7 and windows 10.  We bought a windows 10 machine and I installed python 3.8 on it.  Many of my python apps failed with an error similar to this >   File "C:\Python38\lib\os.py", line 818, in fsdecode    filename = 
fspath(filename)  # Does type-checking of `filename`.TypeError: expected 
str, bytes or os.PathLike object, not list

When posting tracebacks, *copy* and paste the full traceback *with hard 
returns* so lines are not joined together as above.  With them inserted, 
the above is:

File "C:\Python38\lib\os.py", line 818, in fsdecode
   filename = fspath(filename) # Does type-checking of `filename`.
TypeError: expected str, bytes or os.PathLike object, not list

fsdecode is being passed a list as a filename.  Look at the full 
traceback to see if that comes from you or something internal.

> Any advice on how to fix version 3.8 would be appreciated.

Don't assume that 3.8 is the problem and in need of a fix.  Maybe your 
code depends on a bug in 3.6 fixed in the 3.8 you installed.  fsdecode 
itself is the same in 3.6 and 3.8.  On Windows, fspath is supplied by 
the C-coded nt module.  You could search the change logs in What's New 
3.7 and 3.8 for mention of fspath.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy