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Author gregory.p.smith
Recipients docs@python, gregory.p.smith, steve.dower
Date 2021-03-04.18:43:56
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Message-id <1614883436.88.0.196877066023.issue43403@roundup.psfhosted.org>
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As noted in the comment on https://github.com/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup/issues/540#issuecomment-789485896

The Python documentation in https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.path.html makes an odd claim that bytes cannot represent all file names on Windows.  That doesn't make sense.  bytes can by definition represent everything.

"""Vice versa, using bytes objects cannot represent all file names on Windows (in the standard mbcs encoding), hence Windows applications should use string objects to access all files."""

Could we get this clarified and corrected to cover what any actual technical limitation is?

Every OS is going to reject some bytes objects as a pathname for containing invalid byte sequences for their filesystem (ex: I doubt any OS allows null b'\0' characters).  But lets not claim that bytes cannot represent everything on a filesystem with an encoding.
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Date User Action Args
2021-03-04 18:43:56gregory.p.smithsetrecipients: + gregory.p.smith, docs@python, steve.dower
2021-03-04 18:43:56gregory.p.smithsetmessageid: <1614883436.88.0.196877066023.issue43403@roundup.psfhosted.org>
2021-03-04 18:43:56gregory.p.smithlinkissue43403 messages
2021-03-04 18:43:56gregory.p.smithcreate