In Python, how can I get the correctly-cased path for a file?

Question

Windows uses case-insensitive file names, so I can open the same file with any of these:

r"c:\windows\system32\desktop.ini" r"C:\WINdows\System32\DESKTOP.ini" r"C:\WiNdOwS\SyStEm32\DeSkToP.iNi" 

etc. Given any of these paths, how can I find the true case? I want them all to produce:

r"C:\Windows\System32\desktop.ini" 

os.path.normcase doesn't do it, it simply lowercases everything. os.path.abspath returns an absolute path, but each of these is already absolute, and so it doesn't change any of them. os.path.realpath is only used to resolve symbolic links, which Windows doesn't have, so it's the same as abspath on Windows.

Is there a straightforward way to do this?

Answer 1

Ned's GetLongPathName answer doesn't quite work (at least not for me). You need to call GetLongPathName on the return value of GetShortPathname. Using pywin32 for brevity (a ctypes solution would look similar to Ned's):

>>> win32api.GetLongPathName(win32api.GetShortPathName('stopservices.vbs')) 'StopServices.vbs'