Currently, FilePaths on POSIX systems are represented as raw bytes in a String. When this last came up on the mailing list, the general consensus was to make FilePath an abstract datatype representing paths as Strings on Windows and raw bytes on POSIX systems. However, such a change is sure to break some existing code. As a small step towards that goal, I propose adding the following two functions to the System.IO module: filePathToString :: FilePath -> IO String getFilePathToStringFunc :: IO (FilePath -> String) I've implemented those functions in a patch attached to the trac ticket. Haddock docs are here: http://code.haskell.org/~judah/new-io-docs/System-IO.html#v%3AfilePathToStri... On POSIX those functions decode according to the current locale, so they ought to be in the IO monad. I think that the latter function will be easier to integrate into existing pure code. On Windows, those functions are just `return` and `return id`, respectively, since GHC already treats FilePaths as Strings on that platform. Discussion deadline: September 9 Ticket: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/3456 Best, -Judah