Here's something more interesting than my shlex idea.

os.path is, pretty much, the Python FS toolbox, along with shutil. But, there's one feature missing: check if a file is binary. It isn't hard, see http://code.activestate.com/recipes/173220/. But, writing 50 lines of code for a more common task isn't really Python-ish.

So...

What if os.path had a binary checker that works just like isfile:
os.path.isbinary('/nothingness/is/eternal') # Returns boolean