sparkContext.addFile fails when file path contains spaces

When uploading a file to the spark context via the addFile function, an exception is thrown when file path contains a space character. Escaping the space with %20 or
or + doesn't change the result.

to reproduce: 

file_path = "/home/user/test dir/config.conf"

sparkContext.addFile(file_path)

results in:

py4j.protocol.Py4JJavaError: An error occurred while calling o131.addFile.
: java.io.FileNotFoundException: File file:/home/user/test%20dir/config.conf does not exist