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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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12 changes: 12 additions & 0 deletions doc/api/fs.markdown
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Expand Up @@ -94,6 +94,18 @@ Error: EISDIR, read
<etc.>
```

## Buffer API

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

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

## Class: fs.FSWatcher

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