lukiwieser / make-files-ascii

Convert filenames from Unicode to ASCII.

Make Files ASCII

Convert filenames from Unicode to ASCII.

Examples:

• Åland.txt → Aland.txt
• Curaçao.txt → Curacao.txt

You can additionally replace other characters such as ':

• Côte d'Ivoire.txt → Cote d Ivoire.txt

Usage

This project requires Python 3.9+ to be installed on your machine.

First install the dependencies by executing the following command in the project folder:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Then simply execute the script with the following command:

python main.py

Next the script will ask for some options like the location of the folder/file. After entering all parameters, a preview of the renamed filenames/file-content will be shown.

Features

• rename filenames
• rename content of files
• see a preview of the changes before renaming
• optionally replace other characters e.g. Apostrophe ' with Space

Motivation

Some filesystems do not support special characters. For example, when uploading a dataset to Kaggle, only ASCII filenames are supported, and the Apostrophe ' is also not allowed.

Therefore, it can be useful to replace such special characters. Additionally, there might be files that reference these filenames somehow, thus renaming the content of a file could also make sense.

Supported Platforms

This project was tested on Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04.