Question

I have a unicode filename that I would like to open.
The following code:

cmd = u'cmd /c "C:\\Pok\xe9mon.mp3"'
cmd = cmd.encode('utf-8')
subprocess.Popen(cmd)

returns

>>> 'C:\Pokיmon.mp3' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

even though the file do exist. Why is this happening?

Answer 1

It looks like you’re using Windows and Python 2.X. Use os.startfile:

>>> import os
>>> os.startfile(u'Pokémon.mp3')

Non-intuitively, getting the command shell to do the same thing is:

>>> import subprocess
>>> import locale
>>> subprocess.Popen(u'Pokémon.mp3'.encode(locale.getpreferredencoding()),shell=True)

On my system, the command shell (cmd.exe) encoding is cp437, but for Windows programs is cp1252. Popen wanted shell commands encoded as cp1252. This seems like a bug, and it also seems fixed in Python 3.X:

>>> import subprocess
>>> subprocess.Popen('Pokémon.mp3',shell=True)