Message 78718 - Python tracker
> Hmm, I think the supported types should be the same for all > platforms, otherwise it creates unnecessary headaches. I'm don't know Windows very well, but I read many times that Windows uses unicode everywhere. I'm unable to decide if it's a good thing or not to support also bytes on Windows, and anyway I'm unable to write such patch. See also issue #4036 (bytes for subprocess.Popen), especially Martin's message msg74305 (Martin is our Windows expert ;-)).