Encoding with pandas.read_csv when file name has accents
Question: I'm trying to load a CSV with pandas, but am running into a problem if the
file name has accents. It's clearly an encoding problem, but although
`read_csv` lets you set encoding for text within the file, I can't figure out
how to encode the file name properly.

    
    
    input_file = r'C:\...\Datasets\%s\Provinces\Points\%s.csv' % (country, province)
    self.locs = pandas.read_csv(input_file,sep=',',skipinitialspace=True)
    

The CSV file is Anzoátegui.csv. When I'm getting errors,

    
    
    input_file = 'C:\\...\Datasets\Venezuela\Provinces\Points\Anzoátegui.csv
    

Error code:

    
    
    OSError: File b'C:\\PF2\\QGIS Valmiera\\Datasets\\Venezuela\\Provinces\\Points\\Anzo\xc3\xa1tegui.csv' does not exist
    

So maybe it's converting my string to bytes? I tried using
`io.StringIO(input_file)` as well, which puts the correct file name as a
column header on an empty `DataFrame`:

    
    
    Empty DataFrame
    Columns: [C:\PF2\QGIS Valmiera\Datasets\Venezuela\Provinces\Points\Anzoátegui.csv]
    Index: []
    

Any ideas on how to get this file to load? Unfortunately I can't just strip
out accents, as I have to interface with software that requires the proper
name, and I have a ton of files to format (not just the one). Thanks!

Edit: Full error

    
    
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "C:\PF2\eclipse-standard-kepler-SR2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\plugins\org.python.pydev_3.3.3.201401272249\pysrc\pydevd_comm.py", line 891, in doIt
        result = pydevd_vars.evaluateExpression(self.thread_id, self.frame_id, self.expression, self.doExec)
      File "C:\PF2\eclipse-standard-kepler-SR2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\plugins\org.python.pydev_3.3.3.201401272249\pysrc\pydevd_vars.py", line 486, in evaluateExpression
        result = eval(compiled, updated_globals, frame.f_locals)
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\pandas\io\parsers.py", line 404, in parser_f
        return _read(filepath_or_buffer, kwds)
      File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\pandas\io\parsers.py", line 205, in _read
        parser = TextFileReader(filepath_or_buffer, **kwds)
      File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\pandas\io\parsers.py", line 486, in __init__
        self._make_engine(self.engine)
      File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\pandas\io\parsers.py", line 594, in _make_engine
        self._engine = CParserWrapper(self.f, **self.options)
      File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\pandas\io\parsers.py", line 952, in __init__
        self._reader = _parser.TextReader(src, **kwds)
      File "parser.pyx", line 330, in pandas.parser.TextReader.__cinit__ (pandas\parser.c:3040)
      File "parser.pyx", line 557, in pandas.parser.TextReader._setup_parser_source (pandas\parser.c:5387)
    OSError: File b'C:\\PF2\\QGIS Valmiera\\Datasets\\Venezuela\\Provinces\\Points\\Anzo\xc3\xa1tegui.csv' does not exist
    


Answer: Ok folks, I got a little lost in dependency hell, but it turns out that this
issue was fixed in pandas 0.14.0. Install the updated version to get files
named with accents to import correctly.

[Comments at github](https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues/7345).

Thanks for the input!

