A method and system are disclosed for platform-independent file system interaction that can abstract the system-level idiosyncrasies associated with multi-platform, multi-language, multi-encoding file system interactions. One embodiment of the method of this invention can comprise instantiating a string object via a development environment coded calling process and setting a file name and a file path, having an easily-identifiable format, for the string object with the calling process. The string object can determine the encoding of the file name and the file path and the calling process can forward the string object and an associated file operation to an operating system level file system interface handler. The operating system level file system interface handler can call an operating system naming function to format the string object. The string object naming function can be compiled along with an encoding marker indicating the target operating system for the desired file operation. The file name and the file path can be transcoded, based on the encoding marker value, to the encoding of the target operating system. The transcoded file name and file path can be returned to the development environment (e.g., to a developer's application) by the string object naming function. The operating system level file system interface handler can then execute the file operation.