Re: Multibyte and unibyte file names

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden
> Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:25:45 -0500
> 
> >> I think that for w32 it makes sense to try and always decode file names
> >> before returning them to Elisp:
> >> Most file names passed to Elisp primitives are derived from file names
> >> returned by Elisp primitives, so if Emacs decodes all the file names it
> >> returns to Elisp, we can expect to see *very* few encoded file names
> >> passed to Elisp primitives.
> > 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?

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.