Python's os.walk() fails in Windows when there are long filenames

Question

I use python os.walk() to get files and dirs in some directories, but there're files whose names are too long(>300), os.walk() return nothing, use onerror I get '[Error 234] More data is available'. I tried to use yield, but also get nothing and shows 'Traceback: StopIteration'.

OS is windows, code is simple. I have tested with a directory, if there's long-name file, problem occur, while if rename the long-name files with short names, code can get correct result.

I can do nothing for these directories, such as rename or move the long-name files. Please help me to solve the problem!

def t(a):
  for root,dirs,files in os.walk(a): 
    print root,dirs,files
t('c:/test/1') 

Answer 1

In Windows file names (including path) can not be greater than 255 characters, so the error you're seeing comes from Windows, not from Python - because somehow you managed to create such big file names, but now you can't read them. See this post for more details.

Answer 2

The only workaround I can think of is to map the the folder to the specific directory. This will make the path way shorter. e.g. z:\myfile.xlsx instead of c:\a\b\c\d\e\f\g\myfile.xlsx