Python program to remove special characters from all files in a folder

Introduction :

In this python programming tutorial, we will learn how to remove special characters from all files in a folder. We will remove the numeric digits, special characters and blank spaces from the files. Following are the steps we are going to use in the program :

1. Read all files one by one in the folder.

2. Check for each file if the name contains any special character,numeric value or blank space.

3. If it does, remove these characters from the file name.

To solve this problem, you need to know :

1. How to iterate through files in a folder in python.

2. How to modify a string in python and

3. How to rename a file.

If you already know how the above functionalities work, then it will not take much time to grab the main program below.

Python program :

First of all, create one directory and put a few files in it. We have created one directory named Sample inside the C drive with the below files :

first23@file
second_file
third file

Now, run the below python program :

#1
import os
from os import listdir
from os import path

#2
folder_path = 'C:\Sample\'

#3
def getModifiedPath(originalPath):
    return ''.join(c for c in originalPath if c.isalpha())

#4
for filename in listdir(folder_path):
    src = folder_path + filename
    dst = folder_path + getModifiedPath(filename)

    #5
    os.rename(src,dst)

It will rename all files in the Sample folder as below :

firstfile
secondfile
thirdfile

As you can see that the file names are changed in the folder. All special characters, numbers and spaces are removed from the files.

Explanation :

The commented numbers in the above program denote the step numbers below :

1. Import os module and also import listdir and path from the os module.

2. folder_path is the path of the folder where all files are stored.

3. getModifiedPath function is used to remove all characters except alphabets from a string. It takes one string as a parameter and returns the modified string.

4. Use one for loop to iterate through the files stored in the folder one by one. listdir is used to list all files in a folder. src is the complete path of the source file we want to change and dst is the modified complete path for that file.

5. Finally, use rename() method to rename the source file src.

Conclusion :

I hope that you have found this tutorial helpful. Try to run the program and drop one comment below if you have any queries.

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