Comment 3 for bug 378486

>>> Please consider adding support for UNC paths.
>>
>> What's an UNC path?

short for Universal Naming Convention.

> Windows network share, as expressed by
>
>  \\server\c$\scripts
>
> Customary way to access these shares is to use SUBST to assign a drive
> letter for the share. This works in all applications...

or PUSHD and POPD, which are easier to use than subst because you
don't need to go through the logic of determining which drive letters
are available. Subst is older, archaic even (at least since DOS3), and
guaranteed to be available. Pushd is newer, and it's UNC ability can
be disabled by a system setting (not normally a problem, I've only
seen command extensions disabled on computers with hypervigilant
security settings).

http://www.ss64.com/nt/subst.html
http://www.ss64.com/nt/pushd.html

However I doubt that mapping a drive letter is necessary. Cream (vim)
and Notepad++ and many other programs I've used can edit UNC files in
situ. I'd be quite surprised if python can't do the same natively.
There is os.path.splitunc() at least.

http://docs.python.org/library/os.path.html#os.path.splitunc

cheers,

-matt