CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-3.xunicodeasciifilenames
Vijchti
Vijchti

Reputation: 523

How to rename a file with non-ASCII character encoding to ASCII

I have the file name, "abc枚.xlsx", containing some kind of non-ASCII character encoding and I'd like to remove all non-ASCII characters to rename it to "abc.xlsx".

Here is what I've tried:

import os
import string
os.chdir(src_dir)  #src_dir is a path to my directory that contains the odd file
for file_name in os.listdir(): 
    new_file_name = ''.join(c for c in file_name if c in string.printable)
    os.rename(file_name, new_file_name)

The following error results at os.rename():

builtins.WindowsError: (2, 'The system cannot find the file specified')

This is on a Windows system, sys.getfilesystemencoding() gives me mbcs, if that helps any.

What should I do to circumvent this error and allow me to change the file name?

Upvotes: 7

Views: 5239

Answers (1)

Simanas
Simanas

Reputation: 2793

Here you go, this works with python 2.7 as well

import os
import string

for file_name in os.listdir(src_dir): 
    new_file_name = ''.join(c for c in file_name if c in string.printable)
    os.rename(os.path.join(src_dir,file_name), os.path.join(src_dir, new_file_name))

Cheers! Don't forget to up-vote if you find this answer useful! ;)

Upvotes: 12

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