1) Comparing the time it would take to walk a directory tree thousands of times, with the storage it would take to store thousands of file names, I think you would be much better of to store the list. Buy another memory chip if needed.
2) I suspect that Python is NOT returning question mark characters. Windows (or KIMODO) is probably failing to display some characters that Python is returning. Try using >>> print repr(yourFileNameObjectHere) to see what is really in that object. You cannot expect your display to have the glyph for every arbitrary unicode code point, so repr() will display it with backslash escapes so that you can tell what is there. 3) The documentation for "os.listdir(path)" says: "Changed in version 2.3: On Windows NT/2k/XP and Unix, if path is a Unicode object, the result will be a list of Unicode objects." Make sure that your path argument is a unicode object. myPath = unicode(someStringObject) or myPath = u'somePath' -- Vernon Cole _______________________________________________ python-win32 mailing list python-win32@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-win32