Remove special character from multiple file names in folder in python

Question

I am trying to remove special character(-) from multiple files in folder.

Example:

Filenames :

1. -name1.xml
2. -name2.xml
3. -name3.xml

Rename To:

1. name1.xml
2. name2.xml
3. name3.xml

My Code :

import os

for filename in os.listdir(Folder):
    os.rename(Folder+'/'+filename, Folder + '/' + Filename.replace("-","" )

but Unfortunately it appears to do nothing.

How do I do this properly?

Answer 1

In the code below, you can simply use the replace function to get your desired output. Let me know if this works and/or helps!

import os

# I named my folder containing .XML files "Test"
Folder = 'Test/'

for filename in os.listdir(Folder):
    os.rename(Folder + filename, Folder + filename.replace('-',''))

Outputs:

name1.xml
name2.xml
name3.xml

Answer 2

I am a big fan of using Pathlib for problems like this.

Given (on Unix but should work on all OSs):

% ls -1
-name1.xml
-name2.xml
-name3.xml
name-4.xml

You can do:

from pathlib import Path 

p=Path(Folder)

for fn in p.glob("-*.xml"):
    fn.replace(fn.with_name(str(fn.name).replace('-','')))

Result:

% ls -1
name-4.xml
name1.xml
name2.xml
name3.xml

The glob -*.xml only will find files that start with - so the file name-4.xml is unchanged.

Pathlib (as written here) will also work the same regardless of the path separator on different OSs.