code: def path_to_tuple(path, windows=False):
      
      if windows:
          path_tup = tuple(path.split('\\'))
      else:
          path_tup = tuple(path.split('/'))
      #
      # Normalize UTF-8 encoding to consistent form so cache lookups will work, see
      # https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/unicodedata.html#unicodedata.normalize
      path_tup = tuple(normalize('NFD', part) for part in path_tup)
      return path_tup
docs: Split `chan_path` into individual parts and form a tuple (used as key).