$ perl -MB -E 'open(my $f, ">", "\x{C4}\x{80}\x{A0}.txt") or die "$!"' $ python2.7 Python 2.7.18 (default, Oct 10 2021, 22:29:32) [GCC 11.1.0] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import os >>> l=os.listdir('.') >>> l ['\xc4\x80\xa0.txt', '\xc4\x80'] >>> l=os.listdir(u'.') >>> l ['\xc4\x80\xa0.txt', u'\u0100']