Re: Multibyte and unibyte file names

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> 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 we decode unibyte file names at entry to each primitive, before
> doing anything else, and thereafter manipulate decoded multibyte
> strings, this will happen anyway.

I get the impression that we're not talking about the same thing.
If you only decode on entry, then Elisp code will first see encoded file
names returned by directory-files and will then see them converted to
decoded form after passing the result to a file-name
manipulation function.

Which is why I suggest to decode right away in the functions that return
file names (e.g. directory-files).

> But since everybody (at least those who spoke) seem to think this is a
> w32 only problem, I will solve it for w32 only.

I think the specific problems you mentioned are mostly non-issues under
POSIX, but the general problem of deciding which representation to use
is more general.


        Stefan