[Python-Dev] [Python-3000] New proposition for Python3 bytes filename issue

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:40:01 am Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> >> On Windows, we might reject bytes filenames for all file
> >> operations: open(), unlink(), os.path.join(), etc. (raise a
> >> TypeError or UnicodeError)
> >
> > Since I've seen no objections to this yet: please no. If we offer a
> > "lower-level" bytes filename API, it should work for all platforms.
>
> Unfortunately, it can't. You cannot represent all possible file names
> in a byte string in Windows (just as you can't do so in a Unicode
> string on Unix).


Sorry, maybe I'm just being thick here, but I don't understand how that 
is possible. On the physical disk, each Windows file name must be 
represented by a byte string, yes? So how is it possible that there are 
Windows files with names that can't be represented as a byte string? 
What have I missed?



-- 
Steven