# Renaming non-ASCII files

**URL:** <https://discourse.beets.io/t/renaming-non-ascii-files/1244>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [May 2, 2020, 2:09am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/renaming-non-ascii-files/1244 "2020-05-02T02:09:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![zzolo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/f9ae1b/32.png) [@zzolo](https://discourse.beets.io/u/zzolo)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2020, 2:09am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/renaming-non-ascii-files/1244/1 "2020-05-02T02:09:10Z")

</div>

Hey all. Have been using Beets for a while and absolutely love it. I have a problem that’s racking my brain.

I have a very well-established collection of music, but only recently noticed that Beets allowed utf-8 characters into filenames, such as á, é, í, ó, ú, ü, ñ and what-not.

The filesystem/server that the music is on and where it is played from is totally fine with this. But, I run into problems when I try to do Beet operations from another computer, as the conversion of those characters means that I can’t read those files, and Beets throws errors. I don’t think this is a bug with Beets, it’s just the way the mounted filesystem works.

Ultimately I just want to rename those files or directories. But, there are 100’s, maybe 1000’s of them.  
I know the `beet move` command exists and works great for other files, but for these it throws errors:

```
beet move "albumartist_sort::^b"
Moving 44 items.
Error: No such file or directory while moving /Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/ ****.mp3 to /Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/****.mp3

```

I’ve tried many, many ways to go about this. I’ve tried different settings on mounting the filesystem, but I really don’t think there’s a way to do that. I’ve tried re-importing those files/albums, but it’s very slow and it can be difficult to match up the right album, and then I still have to manually remove the old files.

Any suggestions are welcome. I’m really kind of lost here.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![adrian](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/adrian/32/4_2.png) [@adrian](https://discourse.beets.io/u/adrian)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2020, 2:49am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/renaming-non-ascii-files/1244/2 "2020-05-02T02:49:52Z")

</div>

Hi! Can you give a few more details about the error you’re seeing? That would help give a bit more context.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![zzolo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/f9ae1b/32.png) [@zzolo](https://discourse.beets.io/u/zzolo)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2020, 12:07am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/renaming-non-ascii-files/1244/3 "2020-05-03T00:07:22Z")

</div>

Sure, here’s the output with -vv:

```
$ beet -vv move "albumartist_sort::^b"
user configuration: /Users/ap/.config/beets/config.yaml
data directory: /Users/ap/.config/beets
plugin paths: 
Sending event: pluginload
inline: adding item field artist_ranked
inline: adding item field artist_only_ranked
inline: adding item field different_artist
artresizer: method is (2, (7, 0, 10), False)
lyrics: Disabling google source: no API key configured.
library database: /Users/ap/.config/beets/beets.db
library directory: /Volumes/Multimedia/tunes
Sending event: library_opened
Moving 44 items.
moving: /Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/bôa/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3
Sending event: before_item_moved
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/beets/util/ __init__.py", line 481, in move
os.rename(path, dest)
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: b'/Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/bo\xcc\x82a/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3' -> b'/Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/boa/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/beets/util/ __init__.py", line 485, in move
shutil.copyfile(path, dest)
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/3.7.7/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/shutil.py", line 120, in copyfile
with open(src, 'rb') as fsrc:
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: b'/Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/bo\xcc\x82a/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3'

Error: No such file or directory while moving /Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/bôa/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3 to /Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/boa/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3

```

Specifically, this is the core error:

`FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: b'/Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/bo\xcc\x82a/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3' -> b'/Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/boa/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3'`

And even more specifically it is escaping the utf-8 characters: `/bo\xcc\x82a/` which is really `/bôa/` on the original filesystem.

Again, I don’t think this is an error with Beets, but I was hoping someone came across this issue and may have found a way to fix it without a lot of manual steps. My current plan is try to install Beets on my NAS, though I really don’t want to go down that route for many reasons.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![adrian](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/adrian/32/4_2.png) [@adrian](https://discourse.beets.io/u/adrian)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2020, 1:28am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/renaming-non-ascii-files/1244/4 "2020-05-03T01:28:45Z")

</div>

Huh, that is pretty weird! Thanks for all the extra details. And to confirm, that file does actually exist, right? The one at this path (when properly “unescaped”)?

```auto
b'/Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/bo\xcc\x82a/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3'

```

That is, this command does what you’d expect?

```auto
ls '/Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/bôa/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3'

```

My best guess is that something’s wrong with the network filesystem mount. Any chance that can be reconfigured?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![zzolo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/f9ae1b/32.png) [@zzolo](https://discourse.beets.io/u/zzolo)\
**Post date:** [May 4, 2020, 1:27am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/renaming-non-ascii-files/1244/5 "2020-05-04T01:27:25Z")

</div>

Yeah, so trying to list file does throws an error:

```
ls '/Volumes/Multimedia/tunes/albums/B/bôa/1998 - Duvet/01 - Duvet.mp3'
File not found

```

But, through lots of research, I don’t think there’s anyway I can mount the filesystem differently. It’s a Mac with a SMB share.

I’ve just decided to use a spare Raspberry Pi I have around and mount the share there and install beet there and do the move. Kind of annoying, but I think it’s the only way.