Re: Multibyte and unibyte file names

[Stefan Monnier]

>> > So you are saying that each primitive should detect unibyte file names
>> > it gets as arguments and DECODE_FILE them right away?
>> I think not: I was talking about decoding the file names *returned*
>> by primitives.
> What would be the difference, from the POV of the callers of the
> primitives?

That the callers get to see meaningful (decoded) names?
That file-name manipulation functions don't have the side effect of
encoding/decoding file names?

> If there is no difference, what I suggested is easier to implement,
> because it eliminates the need to test whether a given file name is
> multibyte (and needs to be encoded) or not, before handing the file
> names to system APIs.

I don't see why it eliminates this need: file-exists-p can still be
called with multibyte and unibyte strings.


        Stefan