How to work around a unicode problem?

[tinnews at isbd.co.uk]

Peter Otten <__peter__ at web.de> wrote:
> tinnews at isbd.co.uk wrote:
> 
> > I have a small python program that uses the pyexiv2 package to view
> > exif data in image files.
> > 
> > I've hit a problem because I have a filename with accented characters
> > in its path and the pyexiv2 code traps as follows:-
> > 
> >     Traceback (most recent call last):
> >       File "/home/chris/bin/eview.py", line 87, in <module>
> >         image = pyexiv2.ImageMetadata(filepath)
> >       File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pyexiv2/metadata.py", line
> >       65, in __init__
> >         self.filename = filename.encode(sys.getfilesystemencoding())
> >     UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position
> >     38: ordinal not in range(128)
> > 
> > Without digging deep into pyexiv2 is there any way I can work around
> > this error?  The accented characters aren't in the filename itself,
> > they're in the directory path.  I.e. it's:-
> > 
> >     ./1977/04 April/#09 - Monaco, inc. Musée de Poupée/p77_08_011.jpg
> > 
> > I could of course remove the accents but I'd much prefer not to do so.
>  
> Try passing a unicode filename. A quickfix:
> 
> filepath = filepath.decode(sys.getfilesystemencoding())
> image = pyexiv2.ImageMetadata(filepath)
> 
... and this solution works too, thank you.

> If you are using os.listdir() or glob.glob() to produce the filepath -- they 
> will return unicode filenames if you invoke them with a unicode argument.
> 
-- 
Chris Green