Retrieving contents from a directory on a network drive (windows)

Question

I\'m have an issue about displaying the files from a network drive on Windows.

path = "\\\\\\\\nexus\\\\File Server\\\\Technical\\\\MyDrive\\\\Software\\         


        

Answer 1

Just tested on my XP PC, Python 2.7, SMB share \\myshare

os.listdir('\\\\myshare') # Fails with "WindowsError: [Error 53] The network path was not found"

os.listdir('\\\\myshare/folder') # Succeeds

I think some of the confusion could be caused by WindowsError showing the repr() of the path, rather than the actual path -

>>> repr(path)
"'\\\\myshare'"
>>> str(path)
'\\myshare'

If this is a Python 3 & unicode problem, I suggest trying to fix the string first:

path = "\\\\myshare\folder"
path = bytes(path, "utf-8").decode("unicode_escape")
print os.listdir(path)

(unfortunately I can't test this since I don't have Python 3 installed, but please let me know if it works and I'll edit my answer)

Answer 2

The workaround for this issue is following:

os.listdir('\\networkshares\\folder1\\folder2\\folder3')

It means that you have to use double slashes instead of single one.

Answer 3

This one worked for me:

os.listdir('\\\\server\folder\subfolder\etc')

(with Python 2.7 32b on Win7 64b)