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fs: document intention and caveats of Buffer API #6020

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fs: document intention and caveats of Buffer API #6020

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fs: document intention and dangers of Buffer API
seishun Apr 2, 2016
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Update fs.markdown
seishun Apr 12, 2016
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11 changes: 11 additions & 0 deletions doc/api/fs.markdown
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Expand Up @@ -94,6 +94,17 @@ Error: EISDIR, read
<etc.>
```

## Buffer API

`fs` functions support passing and receiving paths as both strings and Buffers.
The latter is intended for filesystems which support non-UTF-8 filenames (except
NTFS, where the conversion to UTF-8 is done automatically) and is normally not
needed.
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Perhaps,

`fs` functions support passing and receiving paths as both strings
and Buffers. The latter is intended to make it easier to work with
filesystems that allow for non-UTF-8 filenames. For most typical
uses, working with paths as Buffers will be unnecessary.

*Note* that on certain file systems (such as NTFS and HFS+) Node.js
will always encode filenames as UTF-8. On such file systems, passing 
non-UTF-8 encoded Buffers to `fs` functions will not work as expected.


**Caution:** the Buffer API is not portable. On NTFS and HFS+, the incoming
Buffers are always encoded in UTF-8, and passing non-UTF-8 encoded Buffers to
`fs` functions won't work as expected.

## Class: fs.FSWatcher

Objects returned from `fs.watch()` are of this type.
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