What do we gain from this? Several things.
* First, usage of PATH_MAX (the POSIX constant) is eliminated.
PATH_MAX is actually a lie; Linux and OS X (and probably other BSDs
too) do not have an actual path length limit. Linux claims 4096,
OS X claims 1024, but it is trivial to construct paths that are
longer.
* Second, while Windows does enforce a limit of MAX_PATH (the Win32
constant) for its ASCII functions, the Unicode variants, when
used with UNC paths, do not have this restriction.
The capability to use UNC paths is useful by itself, as it allows
to access files on network shares directly.
* Third, representing paths as std::string will make it easier to
interoperate with *W WinAPI functions later.
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