unicode filenames

[Alex Martelli]

Erik Max Francis wrote:
   ...
> It means that filenames are strings of bytes.  What the meaning of those
> bytes are is entirely application dependent.  They could be raw ASCII

ALMOST entirely -- for example, none of the bytes is allowed to have 
the value 47 (since that is the code for "slash" in ASCII).

> applications that make the files, it's applications that decide what
> encoding to use.

As long as the encoding never needs to use a byte whose value is
47.  I think that rules out UTF-8 and most other popular
multi-byte encodings, doesn't it?


Alex