How can str.translate from Python 2, only removing characters, be made to work in Python 3?

Question

This is an assignment that needs to change the name of the file within a certain folder, however, it doesn't change the name after all. Can anyone help?

import os

def rename_files():
    file_list = os.listdir(r"C:\Users\Downloads\prank")
    saved_path = os.getcwd()
    print("Current Working Directory is " +saved_path)
    os.chdir(r"C:\Users\Downloads\prank")
    for file_name in file_list:
        os.rename(file_name, file_name.translate(None, "0123456789"))
    os.chdir(saved_path)

rename_files()

result:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Downloads\prank\rename_files.py", line 10, in <module>
    rename_files()
  File "C:\Users\Downloads\prank\rename_files.py", line 8, in rename_files
    os.rename(file_name, file_name.translate(None, '0123456789'))
TypeError: translate() takes exactly one argument (2 given)

This code works in Python 2, but does not work in Python 3. How can it be made to work in Python 3.6, I only need to delete characters.

I am new to the python, can you be more specific? The code runs ok within python 2.7 — Roxanne, Jan 02 '18 at 09:33
Thank you, It works! I will study str.maketrans function a bit more! — Roxanne, Jan 02 '18 at 09:46

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 02 '18 at 09:38

You are confusing the Python 2 str.translate() method with the Python 3 version (which is really the same as unicode.tranlate() in Python 2).

You can use the str.maketrans() static method to create a translation map; pass your string of digits to be removed in as the third argument to that function:

file_name.translate(str.maketrans('', '', '0123456789'))

Better still, store the result of str.maketrans() outside of the loop, and re-use it:

no_digits = str.maketrans('', '', '0123456789')

for file_name in file_list:
    os.rename(file_name, file_name.translate(no_digits))

How can str.translate from Python 2, only removing characters, be made to work in Python 3?

1 Answers1