I believe they fixed that in 3.1, so it's no longer impossible: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0383/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0383/ Regarding t

I believe they fixed that in 3.1, so it's no longer impossible: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0383/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0383/ Regarding the huge mess, that exists with or without Python 3 if filenames use unknown, incorrect or inconsistent encodings. To treat a path as as text, e.g. to show it to a human or send to another system, you have to know its encoding. Python 3 and GTK (with its G_FILENAME_ENCODING and G_BROKEN_FILENAMES) make this clear - some other software (like Python 2) just silently uses and propagates the broken data.