[3.6] bpo-29623: Make PathLike objects work with ConfigParser.read() (#242) (#432)

(cherry picked from commit 85b8d01c916b482dac937b93ede1e53b1db0361c)

Conflicts:

	Lib/test/test_configparser.py

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/library/configparser.rst b/Doc/library/configparser.rst
index e09562d..af57cba 100644
--- a/Doc/library/configparser.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/configparser.rst
@@ -983,13 +983,16 @@ ConfigParser Objects
    .. method:: read(filenames, encoding=None)
 
       Attempt to read and parse a list of filenames, returning a list of
-      filenames which were successfully parsed.  If *filenames* is a string, it
-      is treated as a single filename.  If a file named in *filenames* cannot
-      be opened, that file will be ignored.  This is designed so that you can
-      specify a list of potential configuration file locations (for example,
-      the current directory, the user's home directory, and some system-wide
-      directory), and all existing configuration files in the list will be
-      read.  If none of the named files exist, the :class:`ConfigParser`
+      filenames which were successfully parsed.
+
+      If *filenames* is a string or :term:`path-like object`, it is treated as
+      a single filename.  If a file named in *filenames* cannot be opened, that
+      file will be ignored.  This is designed so that you can specify a list of
+      potential configuration file locations (for example, the current
+      directory, the user's home directory, and some system-wide directory),
+      and all existing configuration files in the list will be read.
+
+      If none of the named files exist, the :class:`ConfigParser`
       instance will contain an empty dataset.  An application which requires
       initial values to be loaded from a file should load the required file or
       files using :meth:`read_file` before calling :meth:`read` for any
@@ -1006,6 +1009,9 @@ ConfigParser Objects
          The *encoding* parameter.  Previously, all files were read using the
          default encoding for :func:`open`.
 
+      .. versionadded:: 3.6.1
+         The *filenames* parameter accepts a :term:`path-like object`.
+
 
    .. method:: read_file(f, source=None)