I’m working towards supporting subclassing pathlib.Path for things like zip/tar archives, iso files, S3, etc. This was first brought up a few years ago in bpo-24132 https://bugs.python.org/issue24132 and discussed further on the python-ideas forum https://discuss.python.org/t/make-pathlib-extensible/3428. Before I can approach the meat of the issue, I'd like to land a handful of backwards-compatible patches that tidy up the pathlib internals. These are: - #19220 https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/19220 / bpo-39924 https://bugs.python.org/issue39924: Handle missing os functions more consistently in pathlib - #18838 https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/18838 / bpo-39895 https://bugs.python.org/issue39895: Move pathlib.Path.touch() implementation into the path accessor - #19342 https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/19342 / bpo-40038 https://bugs.python.org/issue40038: Remove partial support for preserving accessor when modifying a path - #18841 https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/18841 / bpo-39899 https://bugs.python.org/issue39899: Make pathlib use os.path.expanduser() to expand home directories - #18834 https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/18834 / bpo-39659 https://bugs.python.org/issue39659: Route calls from pathlib.Path to os.getcwd() via the path accessor - #18864 https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/18864 / bpo-39906 https://bugs.python.org/issue39906: Add follow_symlinks parameter to pathlib.Path.stat() and chmod() - #24294 https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/24294 / bpo-42999 https://bugs.python.org/issue42999: Expand and clarify pathlib.Path.link_to() documentation Could I please request review of these patches? A couple may already be ready to land. (I appreciate they’re a little dry. This is all prep work for the introduction of a shiny new class, tentatively named ‘AbstractPath’). Thanks! Barney