Many functions in os module support dir_fd and follow_symlinks keyword arguments. I think that os.listdir and os.scandir should do likewise.

See also: issue25996.

os.listdir() with dir_fd:

    fd = os.open(path, os.O_RDONLY, dir_fd=dir_fd)
    try:
        result = os.listdir(fd)
    finally:
        os.close(fd)

What meaning of follow_symlinks for os.listdir()?

1. Yes, it's possible to emulate dir_fd this way, so this is just for convenience.
2. If follow_symlinks is False, O_NOFOLLOW is passed to the underlying open(2) syscall. Of course, this doesn't make sense if a file descriptor is passed already.

But why you want to pass O_NOFOLLOW to the underlying open(2) syscall?

Mostly for consistency with other functions. Also, this provides an easy way to walk a directory tree recursively: just call listdir on every member, and if it doesn't raise OSError, that member must be a directory. With follow_symlinks=False, this method wouldn't follow symlinks, unlike os.walk and os.fwalk, which always follow symlinks at least to differentiate between symlinks to directories and other symlinks.