I really, really, REALLY think that it is bad to mix issues. This makes patch review impossible.
This specific issue is about introducing an fsdecode and fsencode function; this is what the bug title says, and what the initial patch did.
Whether or not byte-oriented access to environment variables is also needed is a *separate* issue. -1 on dealing with that in this report.
FWIW, I'm +0 on adding these functions. MAL, please stop messing issue subjects. If you are fundamentally opposed to adding such functions, please request that a PEP be written or something. Otherwise, I accept the original patch.
I'm -1 on issue8514.patch; it is out-of-scope of the issue.