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-rw-r--r--Doc/library/os.path.rst9
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diff --git a/Doc/library/os.path.rst b/Doc/library/os.path.rst
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--- a/Doc/library/os.path.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/os.path.rst
@@ -10,7 +10,14 @@
This module implements some useful functions on pathnames. To read or
write files see :func:`open`, and for accessing the filesystem see the
-:mod:`os` module.
+:mod:`os` module. The path parameters can be passed as either strings,
+or bytes. Applications are encouraged to represent file names as
+(Unicode) character strings. Unfortunately, some file names may not be
+representable as strings on Unix, so applications that need to support
+arbitrary file names on Unix should use bytes objects to represent
+path names. Vice versa, using bytes objects cannot represent all file
+names on Windows (in the standard ``mbcs`` encoding), hence Windows
+applications should use string objects to access all files.
.. warning::