problem with special characters in filename

[fizzotti]

using:

Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Jul 31 2008, 17:28:52)
[GCC 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)] on linux2


Hello

I have two files (let's assume they are all in the same directory):

1) "a.dat" containing the single line "Sébastien.dat"
2) "Sébastien.dat" containing arbitraty data

I want to:

open "a.dat"
read in the single line ("Sébastien.dat")
copy the file described by the single line ("Sébastien.dat") to
another location with name "b.dat"

This is what I have started with:

import shutil

file = open('a.dat','r') #opens file for reading
for line in file:
print line
old_name = line[0:len(line)-1] #gets rid of "\n" suffix
print old_name
shutil.copy(old_name, 'b.dat') #copies file

However I get the following error:
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'S\xc3\xa9bastien.dat'

I'm sure this has something to do with encoding and decoding UTF-8 and
Unicode or something like that, but everything I've tried has yet to
produce any favourable results.

Thanks
Dino

 

[Diez B. Roggisch]

using:

Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Jul 31 2008, 17:28:52)
[GCC 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)] on linux2


Hello

I have two files (let's assume they are all in the same directory):

1) "a.dat" containing the single line "Sébastien.dat"
2) "Sébastien.dat" containing arbitraty data

I want to:

open "a.dat"
read in the single line ("Sébastien.dat")
copy the file described by the single line ("Sébastien.dat") to
another location with name "b.dat"

This is what I have started with:

import shutil

file = open('a.dat','r') #opens file for reading
for line in file:
print line
old_name = line[0:len(line)-1] #gets rid of "\n" suffix
print old_name
shutil.copy(old_name, 'b.dat') #copies file

However I get the following error:
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'S\xc3\xa9bastien.dat'

I'm sure this has something to do with encoding and decoding UTF-8 and
Unicode or something like that, but everything I've tried has yet to
produce any favourable results.

You need to know two things:

- what encoding has the a.dat-content?

- what encoding uses your filesystem?

Then you need to decode the file's contents with the first one, and then
encode it with the second one.

The above at least applies to Linux. I'm not sure about windows - I
*know* they have wide-char/unicode support, but I'm not sure how exactly
that is exposed via the python file apis

Diez

 

[Diez B. Roggisch]

The above at least applies to Linux. I'm not sure about windows - I
*know* they have wide-char/unicode support, but I'm not sure how exactly
that is exposed via the python file apis

Just found this:

http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/unicode


there is a seciton about filenames and OSes in there, you should read it.

Diez