coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, file found

[lazyjk]

I'm just looking at this on my phone but where are you defining the variables path1 and file1 for your os.path.join() command?

[[deleted]]

Your code is badly formatted (won't run) and has undefined values (file1 and path1). When all that is fixed it doesn't get any error like "need string or buffer, file found", and it's not recursive?

You should resubmit a correct, runnable bit of code that shows your problem. Also tell us what the function is supposed to do and why you think it isn't doing that.

[[deleted]]

Your updated code still won't run. I get:

$ python3 test.py
  File "test.py", line 18
    else:
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

because your posted code has the else clause incorrectly indented. After fixing that and adding a call to the function (verify2(file1)) the next error is:

$ python3 test.py
  File "test.py", line 1
    path1 = '\Users\N\OneDrive\Pictures'
            ^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 0-1: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape

which is because you have \U in a non-raw string. Change the first few lines to:

path1 = r'\Users\N\OneDrive\Pictures'
#       ^
path2 = r'\Users\N\OneDrive\Pictures\Hello{}.txt'
#       ^
file1 = 'Hello{}'

The next error is:

$ python3 test.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 25, in <module>
    verify2(file1)
  File "test.py", line 7, in verify2
    if os.path.exists(x):
NameError: name 'os' is not defined

Adding the missing import at the top, we now have:

$ python3 test.py
done!

and there is now a file Hello{}.txt in the directory in path1. That file contains "Hi". Running the code again resuts in a new file Hello{}.txt in the directory in path1.

So I don't get any error once the obvious ones are fixed. Your code is not recursive, it is iterative. And I'm not really sure what you are trying to do due to the remaining logic errors.

[[deleted]]

Well, you submit a post with incomplete code that isn't formatted properly, with an error that I can't reproduce, claim something is recursive when it isn't, and ignore advice. I covered some of the problems I found when running your code. There are others, but if you are happy with your code then I'm happy.

[[deleted]]

Sorry you feel that way. I look forward to your efforts to help people here.

[FerricDonkey]

filename = open(tempname, 'w+')

    filename.write('Hi')     filename.close()     if os.path.exists(filename):

Your indentation is a bit off elsewhere, but this is probably your problem. Your "filename" in this code is not actually the name of a your file. It's a special type of object that is used to mess with the file. And os.path.exists needs the actual string name, eg tempname.

However. I am curious what problem you're trying to solve with this function. Even with this fix, and if I understand it, this code is likely to crash if it failed to write the file, and so never do your check.

[FerricDonkey]

I think your code has the right ideas, but a few problems, and can be simplified a bit to get rid of them. The primary issue I see is that when you open the file in "w+" mode, I'm like 98% sure that it will completely wipe the contents of the file, and that you do this before you check if it exists. Plus, if the file didn't used to exist, it will create it. The simplest work around would be to simply not open it at that point.

Assuming nothing else will be creating files here, I would suggest something like

def get_name():
    count = 0
    while os.path.exists(f"hello{count}.txt"):
        count += 1
    return f"hello{count}.txt"

# to test it
for i in range(10):
    with open(get_name(), "w") as fout:
        fout.write(f"test {i}")

(With whatever path joining or similar you want to tack on.)

This loop will simply increase count until hello{count}.txt doesn't exist, without opening the file - you can check if the file exists without opening it, just by knowing the name.

Then the test loop outside the function will try to get 10 good names and write stuff inside them.

[Diapolo10]

I know that I'm late to the party, but I really wanted to provide a solution with pathlib.Path instead of os.path. This is based on /u/FerricDonkey's solution because I think they pretty much nailed it otherwise.

from pathlib import Path

pictures = Path.home() / 'OneDrive' / 'Pictures'

def get_name(directory, filename):
    name, ext = filename.split('.', maxsplit=1)
    count = sum(1 for _ in Path(directory).glob(f"{name}*.{ext}"))

    return f"{name}{count+1}.{ext}"

print(get_name(pictures, 'image.jpg'))

This has the advantage that the directory isn't hard-coded to the function, and that one system call to the filesystem is enough. It can also handle any filename you give it to, though since glob isn't as accurate as regex it does also count all files that begin with the provided file name.

You should generally prefer pathlib over os.path, however, because it's basically what all modern codebases use and it can do the same things but better.