problem with listdir

[Kam-Hung Soh]

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:07:45 +1000, Francesco Bochicchio  
<bockman at virgilio.it> wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:24:23 -0700, jimgardener wrote:
>
>> hi
>> i have a directory containing .pgm files of P5 type.i wanted to read
>> the pixel values of these files ,so as a firststep i wrote code to
>> make a  list  of filenames using listdir
>>
>> pgmdir="f:\code\python\pgmgallery" # where i have pgm files
>> g2=listdir(pgmdir)
>>
>> i get the following error
>> WindowsError: [Error 123] The filename, directory name, or volume
>> label syntax is incorrect: 'f:\\code\\python\pgmgallery/*.*'
>>
>> i am running python on winXP ..can anyone tell me why i get this
>> error?
>
> Did you try using a raw string as pathname
> pgmdir=r"f:\code\python\pgmgallery"
> ?
>
> AFAIK, the character '\' in interpreted in Python as the beginning of
> an escape sequence (such as '\n') and it should be doubled ( as in the
> error message) or a raw string should be used, telling Python that there
> are no escape sequences inside.
> However, from the message it looks like the path as been understood as
> such, so this might not be the case.
>
> Ciao
> -----
> FB

Neither \c nor \p are escape characters in Section 2.4.1 "String literals".

Could there be some files in that directory whose name is not a valid  
Windows file name?  Windows file names cannot have the following symbols:

\ / : * ? " < > |

-- 
Kam-Hung Soh <a href="http://kamhungsoh.com/blog">Software Salariman</a>