[Python-Dev] Python-3.0, unicode, and os.environ

["Martin v. Löwis"]

>> And environment variables, command line arguments, and file names
>> are not bytes, but characters.
> 
> On Windows NT, sure. On Unix they're still bytes no matter how much we
> want them to be characters.

Only in the API of the OS itself. Treating them as bytes in the
application is a mistake. The bytes are intended to represent
characters, so Python should treat them as what they are.

Regards,
Martin