# Make pathlib extensible

**URL:** <https://discuss.python.org/t/make-pathlib-extensible/3428>\
**Category:** Ideas\
**Created:** [February 24, 2020, 12:15am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/make-pathlib-extensible/3428 "2020-02-24T00:15:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 162

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**Author:** ![barneygale](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/barneygale/32/1882_2.png) [@barneygale](https://discuss.python.org/u/barneygale)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 6:16pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/make-pathlib-extensible/3428/162 "2023-10-24T18:16:55Z")

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It’s a very good thought, and was briefly covered earlier (easy to miss in this long thread):

> [@Make pathlib extensible](https://discuss.python.org/t/make-pathlib-extensible/3428/135):
>
> For my fellow visual learners, here’s a venn diagram showing os.PathLike and pathlib.PathBase:

`pathlib._PathBase` won’t be `os.PathLike` by default for all the reasons you mentioned. It would be a catastrophe if `open(ZipPath('README.rst', zipfile=blah))` silently opened a file called `README.rst` on the local filesystem.

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