Quoting Didier Kryn (kryn@???):

>   Therefore I wonder how 'find' would do, unless fopen() accepts
> the pathological name, which I doubt of.

I'm pretty sure you're right, because upon reflection and testing
'find . -inum N' returns a relative pathspec. Example:

$ cd /tmp
/tmp $ ls -i
139003 access-2008q3.log
138995 access.log         
139004 apache.conf        
/tmp $ find . -inum 139003
./access-2008q3.log
/tmp $

So the trick I mentioned is highly useful for a large number of _other_
varieties of pathological filename, such as ones with several control
characters, etc. -- but not for filenames containing one of the two
absolutely forbidden characters (slash and null).