Perhaps your information is out of date? I think none of what you said is true. Maybe some of it was true in the past.

> Want to get an stream out of a file? Better have utf-8 content. Otherwise all the documentation will be buried 15 meters deep, outdated on some aspects and dependent on some not-released yet features.

    f = open("myfile.txt", "r", encoding=ENCODING)

> Want to name a file? Better have an utf-8 name. I gave-up on python before I was able to open a file with a name that doesn't conform to utf-8.

    export NAME="$(head -c 5 /dev/urandom)"; touch "$NAME"; python -c 'import os; open(os.environ["NAME"])'

> Want to read a line at a time? Sorry, we only do that to text. Go get an utf-8 file.

    fh = open("foo", "rb"); lines=[l for l in fh]

> Want to match with a regular expression or parse it somehow? Sorry, we only do that to text.

    import re; re.match(b"abc", b"abcdef")