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File Path Function Arguments


A Pygame function or method which takes a file path argument will accept either a Unicode or an 8-bit character (byte) string. Unicode strings are translated to Python's default file system encoding, as returned by sys.getfilesystemencoding(). An Unicode code point above U+FFFF — '\uFFFF' — can be coded directly with a 32-bit escape sequences — '\Uxxxxxxxx' — , even for Python interpreters built with an UCS-2 (16-bit character) unicode type. 8-bit character (byte) strings are passed to the operating system unchanged.

Null characters — '\x00' —  are not permitted in the path, raising an exception. An exception is also raised if a Unicode file path cannot be encoded. How UTF-16 surrogate codes are handled is Python interpreter dependent. Use UTF-32 code points and 32-bit escape sequences instead. The exception types are function dependent.