Python and windows filesystem with none-ascii characters

Question

I want to write a folder on a windows system, Vista and Win7 with NTFS file systems. The folders may contain the characters å, ä and/or ö, "förjävligt" for example.

The python files and every string in it is currently in UTF-8, how do I convert it to suite the Windows file system?

Answer 1

If you're working with normal Python 2 strings, you can simply convert them to Unicode

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
normalString = "äöü"

# Now convert to unicode. Specified encoding must match the file encoding
# in this example. In general, you must specify how the bytes-only string
# contained in "normalString" is encoded.
unicodeString = unicode(normalString, "utf-8")

with open(unicodeString, "w") as f:
    ...

and create the files using those Unicode strings. Python (and indirectly the Windows API) will take care of the rest.

Answer 2

If you want to make the strings really nice for working with in windows you can use this safeFilenameCodec. It is a subset of allowable characters, but you won't have to worry about any craziness getting by. And it has generous licensing.