Saw an issue with this the other day and wanted to pass it along to see if it was a bug or intended functionality. So, to encode elements in a path that begin with a number I used the encode functionality in ISO9075. At one point, I accidentally "over fixed" the path by calling the encode method too many times on the path. It actually gave me an invalid path (it encoded it's encode). I found this pretty easy to reproduce as it happens in the CRX Explorer as well.
Ex: path = /content/path/to/my/2009/08/node path = encode( path ); // returns /content/path/to/my/_x0032_009/_x0030_8/node/ path = encode( path ); // returns /content/path/to/my/_x005f_x0032_009/_x005f_x0030_8/node Again, if this is intended functionality, no worries. Just wanted to verify. Respectfully, John