Question

I have this code:

def display(self):
    print self.doc.toprettyxml(indent="  ")
    strigName ='/Users/my_user/Desktop/python/' + str(datetime.datetime.now()) + '.xml'
    print strigName
    with open(strigName, "ws") as f:
        f.write(self.doc.toprettyxml(indent="  "))

that saves and xml file with a timestamp on the name to a path. The problem is that I can only save it to the same directory the script is. When I try to save it in the path shown above it gives me “IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied:” even running the python script with sudo, and yes my user is Admin. What’s wrong?

Answer 1

Colons aren’t allowed in OS X filenames. str(datetime.datetime.now()) is '2012-03-30 14:20:46'

You could replace the colons with dashes in your string before using it, or use something like time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S", time.localtime()) instead of datetime.datetime.now().