os.listdir doc should mention that Unicode decoding can fail

[brodie]

BPO	2856
Nosy	@loewis, @birkenfeld, @pitrou, @vstinner

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/birkenfeld'
closed_at = <Date 2009-05-16.11:21:40.038>
created_at = <Date 2008-05-15.01:16:46.632>
labels = ['type-bug', 'library', 'expert-unicode', 'docs']
title = 'os.listdir doc should mention that Unicode decoding can fail'
updated_at = <Date 2009-05-16.11:21:40.037>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/brodie'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2009-05-16.11:21:40.037>
actor = 'georg.brandl'
assignee = 'georg.brandl'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2009-05-16.11:21:40.038>
closer = 'georg.brandl'
components = ['Documentation', 'Library (Lib)', 'Unicode']
creation = <Date 2008-05-15.01:16:46.632>
creator = 'brodie'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 2856
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['66839', '87628', '87881']
nosy_count = 5.0
nosy_names = ['loewis', 'georg.brandl', 'pitrou', 'vstinner', 'brodie']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue2856'
versions = ['Python 2.6', 'Python 2.7']

[brodie]

The documentation for os.listdir should mention that there's a
possibility that it can fail to decode paths to unicode objects and that
it returns str objects for those paths it couldn't decode.

The documentation should also explain when this might happen, and
perhaps how to deal with it. The cases that this could happen or how to
work around it are beyond my knowledge, but bpo-683592 does mention
something about resetting the locale. I don't know if that comment is
still relevant, or if it applies to all cases of decoding failure,
however.

I don't know if this behavior still exists in Python 2.6. If it does,
the documentation for 2.6 should be amended as well.

[pitrou]

Is it about 2.6 or 3.0/3.1? This problem should have been solved in 3.1,
by the way of special escaping for undecodable characters (that is,
os.listdir() will always return strings rather than bytes objects, but
some of those strings may have special escapes in them).

[birkenfeld]

Fixed in r72678.