Python: getting filename case as stored in Windows?

Question

Though Windows is case insensitive, it does preserve case in filenames. In Python, is there any way to get a filename with case as it is stored on the file system?

E.g., in a Python program I have filename = "texas.txt", but want to know that it's actually stored "TEXAS.txt" on the file system, even if this is inconsequential for various file operations.

Answer 1

Here's the simplest way to do it:

>>> import win32api
>>> win32api.GetLongPathName(win32api.GetShortPathName('texas.txt')))
'TEXAS.txt'

Answer 2

I had problems with special characters with the win32api solution above. For unicode filenames you need to use:

win32api.GetLongPathNameW(win32api.GetShortPathName(path))

Answer 3

>>> import os
>>> os.listdir("./")
['FiLeNaMe.txt']

Does this answer your question?

Answer 4

and if you want to recurse directories

import os
path=os.path.join("c:\\","path")
for r,d,f in os.walk(path):
    for file in f:
        if file.lower() == "texas.txt":
              print "Found: ",os.path.join( r , file )

Answer 5

You could use:

import os
a = os.listdir('mydirpath')
b = [f.lower() for f in a]
try:
    i = b.index('texas.txt')
    print a[i]
except ValueError:
    print('File not found in this directory')

This of course assumes that your search string 'texas.txt' is in lowercase. If it isn't you'll have to convert it to lowercase first.

Answer 6

This one is standard lib only and converts all path parts (except drive letter):

def casedpath(path):
    r = glob.glob(re.sub(r'([^:/\\])(?=[/\\]|$)', r'[\1]', path))
    return r and r[0] or path

And this one handles UNC paths in addition:

def casedpath_unc(path):
    unc, p = os.path.splitunc(path)
    r = glob.glob(unc + re.sub(r'([^:/\\])(?=[/\\]|$)', r'[\1]', p))
    return r and r[0] or path

Note: It is somewhat slower than the file system dependent Win API "GetShortPathName" trick, but works platform & file system independent and also when short filename generation is switched off on Windows volumes (fsutil.exe 8dot3name query C:) - which is recommended at least for performance critical file systems when no 16bit apps rely anymore on that:

fsutil.exe behavior set disable8dot3 1