diff --git a/salt/utils/__init__.py b/salt/utils/__init__.py
index ec018f1ad7..04fcf017e5 100644
--- a/salt/utils/__init__.py
+++ b/salt/utils/__init__.py
@@ -163,6 +163,37 @@ def is_empty(filename):
         return False
 
 
+def safe_filename_leaf(file_basename):
+    '''
+    input the basename of a file, without the directory tree, and returns a safe name to use
+    i.e. only the required characters are converted by urllib.quote
+    If the input is a PY2 String, output a PY2 String. If input is Unicode output Unicode.
+    For consistency all platforms are treated the same. Hard coded to utf8 as its ascii compatible
+    windows is \ / : * ? " < > | posix is /
+    '''
+    def _replace(re_obj):
+        return urllib.quote(re_obj.group(0), safe=u'')
+    if not isinstance(file_basename, six.text_type):
+        # the following string is not prefixed with u
+	return re.sub('[\\\/:*?"<>|]',
+                      _replace,six.text_type(file_basename, 'utf8').encode('ascii', 'backslashreplace'))
+    # the following string is prefixed with u
+    return re.sub(u'[\\\/:*?"<>|]', _replace, file_basename, flags=re.UNICODE)
+
+
+def safe_filepath(file_path_name):
+    '''
+    input the full path and filename, splits on directory separator and calls safe_filename_leaf for
+    each part of the path.
+    '''
+    (drive,path) = os.path.splitdrive(file_path_name)
+    path = os.sep.join([safe_filename_leaf(file_section) for file_section in file_path_name.rsplit(os.sep)])
+    if drive:
+        return os.sep.join([drive, path])
+    else:
+        return path
+
+
 def is_hex(value):
     '''
     Returns True if value is a hexidecimal string, otherwise returns False