Python win32file.CreateFile with UniCode Character

Question

When trying to access a file with a Russian unicode character using win32file.CreateFile(), I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test-utf8.py", line 36, in <module>
    None )
pywintypes.error: (123, 'CreateFile', 'The filename, directory name, or volume l
abel syntax is incorrect.')

Here’s the code. I’m using Python 2.7. I verify that I can open it with regular Python ‘open’:

# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
# We need the line above to tell Python interpreter to use UTF8. 
# You must save this file with UTF8 encoding.
'''
Testing UTF8 Encoding
'''
import win32file
import os, sys

path = u'C:\TempRandom\utf8-1\boo\hi это русский end - Copy.txt'
# Clean path when printing since Windows terminal only supports ASCII:
print("Path: " + path.encode(sys.stdout.encoding, errors='replace'))
# Test that you can open it with normal Python open:
normal_fp = open (path, mode='r')
normal_fp.close()

fileH = win32file.CreateFile( path, win32file.GENERIC_READ, 
                            win32file.FILE_SHARE_READ | win32file.FILE_SHARE_WRITE, 
                            None, # No special security requirements 
                            win32file.OPEN_EXISTING, # expect the file to exist. 
                            0, # Not creating, so attributes dont matter.  
                            None ) # No template file       
result, msg =  win32file.ReadFile(fileH, 1000, None)
print("File Content >>")
print(msg)

Asked By: SilentSteel

||

Source

Answer 1

The solution is to use CreateFileW and not CreateFile:
fileH = win32file.CreateFileW

Ironically, the documentation for CreateFile says it supports PyUnicode strings, but the underlying Windows function does not, unless you use CreateFileW. CreateFileW supports wide characters for unicode.

Thanks to this post discussing the C version of CreateFile:
How do I open a file named 𤭢.txt with CreateFile() API function?

Answered By: SilentSteel

Python win32file.CreateFile with UniCode Character

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