whitespaces in the path of windows filepath

Question

I am working on file operations using python.

I have a filepath as :

filepath = "E:/ABC/SEM 2/testfiles/all.txt"

when I am opening the file using python, it says me :

IOError: No such file:

but, the file is present on the drive.
It may be because windows cannnot take "SEM 2" properly as it contains space.
How can I deal with such whitespaces in the path of window path?

How are you opening the file? There should be no problem with the space in the name. — John La Rooy, Feb 13 '13 at 11:11
It's not difficult to tell if the problem is the space (but I don't think so): just rename the directory and see if it can find the file — Raffaele, Feb 13 '13 at 11:11
it is opening the file properly if i select any of the file which doesnt contains such spaces in folder name — sam, Feb 13 '13 at 11:12
Have you tried using forward slashes instead of the basckslash? — Frankline, Feb 13 '13 at 11:12
@Raffaele : yes renaming the directory works but in practical case, my program will not able to rename directories which having spaces — sam, Feb 13 '13 at 11:13
@Frankline actually in the code posted there are only forward slashes... — Raffaele, Feb 13 '13 at 11:13
@Frankline : no i didnt tried it. i guess windows have this problem of slashes and whitespaces always while programming :( — sam, Feb 13 '13 at 11:14
Forward slashes work fine. so do spaces. How are you trying to open the file? — John La Rooy, Feb 13 '13 at 11:16
What if you wrap the path in another pair of quotes? That should work. — Frankline, Feb 13 '13 at 11:17
this works for me -> filepath = "\"{x}\"".format(x="E:/ABC/SEM 2/testfiles/all.txt") — greendino, Mar 26 '20 at 14:30

score 49 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 03 '14 at 17:19

49

path = r"C:\Users\mememe\Google Drive\Programs\Python\file.csv"

Closing the path in r"string" also solved this problem very well.

answered Sep 03 '14 at 17:19

billmanH

1,061
1
12
22

4

Not for me, I use windows 7 + anaconda 3.5 – FabioSpaghetti Sep 23 '19 at 09:49
What will happen if I used single quotes(') instead of double(")? will that work – Indrajeet Gour Mar 03 '21 at 13:29

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 13 '13 at 11:23

There is no problem with whitespaces in the path since you're not using the "shell" to open the file. Here is a session from the windows console to prove the point. You're doing something else wrong

Python 2.7.2 (default, Jun 12 2011, 14:24:46) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on wi
32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>>
>>> os.makedirs("C:/ABC/SEM 2/testfiles")
>>> open("C:/ABC/SEM 2/testfiles/all.txt","w")
<open file 'C:/ABC/SEM 2/testfiles/all.txt', mode 'w' at 0x0000000001D95420>
>>> exit()

C:\Users\Gnibbler>dir "C:\ABC\SEM 2\testfiles"
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 46A0-BB64

 Directory of c:\ABC\SEM 2\testfiles

13/02/2013  10:20 PM    <DIR>          .
13/02/2013  10:20 PM    <DIR>          ..
13/02/2013  10:20 PM                 0 all.txt
               1 File(s)              0 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  78,929,309,696 bytes free

C:\Users\Gnibbler>

score 20 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 13 '13 at 11:17

20

Try putting double quotes in your filepath variable

"\"E:/ABC/SEM 2/testfiles/all.txt\""

Check the permissions of the file or in any case consider renaming the folder to remove the space

answered Feb 13 '13 at 11:17

valentinos

418
2
11

1

As gnibbler demonstrated, it isn't the space, and more quotes won't help. – msw Feb 13 '13 at 11:29

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 13 '21 at 04:21

2

a hack on Mac:

path = '/Volumes/Public/ABY/Documents/Musiq/slumdog millonaire/Mausam and Escape.mp3'
nPath = path.replace(' ', '\\ ')
print(nPath)

Output:

/Volumes/Public/ABY/Documents/Musiq/slumdog\ millonaire/Mausam\ and\ Escape.mp3

answered Apr 13 '21 at 04:21

Vettiyanakan

6,656
3
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Simple and easy solution, works perfectly on windows as well – pupspulver Oct 20 '21 at 14:06

santarosajoe · Answer 5 · 2020-11-22T04:32:22.310

(WINDOWS - AWS solution)
Solved for windows by putting tripple quotes around files and paths.
Benefits:
1) Prevents excludes that quietly were getting ignored.
2) Files/folders with spaces in them, will no longer kick errors.

    aws_command = 'aws s3 sync """D:/""" """s3://mybucket/my folder/"  --exclude """*RECYCLE.BIN/*""" --exclude """*.cab""" --exclude """System Volume Information/*""" '

    r = subprocess.run(f"powershell.exe {aws_command}", shell=True, capture_output=True, text=True)

whitespaces in the path of windows filepath

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