Getting the following Error: FileNotFoundError: [WinError 3] The system cannot find the path specified:

Question

I am new with Python and I am attempting to extract a specific column from a csv file (Column name = "Hostname"). I keep getting error: FileNotFoundError: [WinError 3] The system cannot find the path specified :

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import os

import pandas as pd

data_location = pd.read_csv(r'C:\\Users\\Marco A\\Desktop\\csv_files\\Status_CS.csv')

df_total = pd.DataFrame(columns=["Hostname"])

for file in os.listdir(str(data_location)):

    df_file = pd.read_csv(data_location + file)
    selected_columns = df_file.loc[:, df_total]
    df_total = pd.concat([selected_columns, df_total], ignore_index=False)

df_total.to_csv("ValuableColumns.csv", index=False)

Error states its in line 10 (" for file in os.listdir(str(data_location)): ") I have also attempted the following code in line 10 " for file in os.listdir(data_location): however, I get the following error:

line 11, in for file in os.listdir(data_location): TypeError: listdir: path should be string, bytes, os.PathLike or None, not DataFrame

Not quite sure how to proceed. Please point me to the right direction.

Answer 1

You are reading the content of the.csv file in the variable data_location . Then, you are calling os.listdir() using the content of the.csv file, and this is not a string directory but a data frame so it will throw an error.

The variable data_location must be a string containing the path of the directory that you are trying to list its files.