Delete folders which contains special chars in Python

Question

I have some folders which names contains special chars. I tried to remove them like this:

shutil.rmtree(os.path.join(mypath,"Input"))

and I get an error:

The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect: ...\\library elements ???? ?????

and my Folder name is :

library elements 階段要素 Элементы

How can I delete this folder?

Thanks David

Answer 1

Assuming you're on Python 2.x, this appears to be a known bug in Python 2.7 . It's likely a problem with locale handling when using the ANSI APIs on Windows (Unicode and locale handling was much weaker in the 2.x line).

Assuming you can't switch to Python 3.x, try passing the path as a unicode path, rather than str , so it exercises the Windows Unicode APIs (that will handle the non-ASCII names correctly). Since your base path appears to be an ASCII str , this can be done by changing:

shutil.rmtree(os.path.join(mypath,"Input"))

to:

shutil.rmtree(os.path.join(mypath,"Input").decode('ascii'))