Yeah filenames on OS X are a pain. However, Python 3 has the opposite problem! All the file system APIs were changed to assume that filenames are strings (seq

Yeah filenames on OS X are a pain. However, Python 3 has the opposite problem! All the file system APIs were changed to assume that filenames are strings (sequences of code points), when they're actually BYTES in POSIX! (which may or may not be utf-8 encoded, but commonly are) So my point is: when you ask for "unicode" support in a language, you have to be careful what you ask for, or it can create more problems. Having less in the core language is good. For the specific case of filenames, I think you just need basename() and dirname() routines that find '/' (or \) regardless of encoding. You don't need a separate string type. I should have said "localization on the server" vs. "localization on desktop/GUIs". What people really want is localized apps, not just unicode, and having a string type in a language doesn't get you that far. Because localization is inherently tied to the operating system, not the language. The filename example shows that, and there are also several other issues like fonts, left-to-right, etc.