PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied

I'm getting this error :

Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python34\lib\tkinter\__init__.py", line 1538, in __call__
return self.func(*args)
File "C:/Users/Marc/Documents/Programmation/Python/Llamachat/Llamachat/Llamachat.py", line 32, in download
with open(place_to_save, 'wb') as file:
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/goodbye.txt'

When running this :

def download():
    # get selected line index
    index = films_list.curselection()[0]
    # get the line's text
    selected_text = films_list.get(index)
    directory = filedialog.askdirectory(parent=root, 
                                        title="Choose where to save your movie")
    place_to_save = directory + '/' + selected_text
    print(directory, selected_text, place_to_save)
    with open(place_to_save, 'wb') as file:
        connect.retrbinary('RETR ' + selected_text, file.write)
    tk.messagebox.showwarning('File downloaded', 
                              'Your movie has been successfully downloaded!' 
                              '\nAnd saved where you asked us to save it!!')

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?

Specs : Python 3.4.4 x86 Windows 10 x64

This happens if you are trying to open a file, but your path is a folder.

This can happen easily by mistake.

To defend against that, use:

import os

path = r"my/path/to/file.txt"
assert os.path.isfile(path)
with open(path, "r") as f:
    pass

The assertion will fail if the path is actually of a folder.

There are basically three main methods of achieving administrator execution privileges on Windows.

1. Running as admin from cmd.exe
2. Creating a shortcut to execute the file with elevated privileges
3. Changing the permissions on the python executable (Not recommended)

---

A) Running cmd.exe as and admin

Since in Windows there is no sudo command you have to run the terminal (cmd.exe) as an administrator to achieve to level of permissions equivalent to sudo. You can do this two ways:

1. Manually

   • Find cmd.exe in C:\Windows\system32
   • Right-click on it
   • Select Run as Administrator
   • It will then open the command prompt in the directory C:\Windows\system32
   • Travel to your project directory
   • Run your program

2. Via key shortcuts

   • Press the windows key (between alt and ctrl usually) + X.
   • A small pop-up list containing various administrator tasks will appear.
   • Select Command Prompt (Admin)
   • Travel to your project directory
   • Run your program

By doing that you are running as Admin so this problem should not persist

B) Creating shortcut with elevated privileges

1. Create a shortcut for python.exe
2. Righ-click the shortcut and select Properties
3. Change the shortcut target into something like "C:\path_to\python.exe" C:\path_to\your_script.py"
4. Click "advanced" in the property panel of the shortcut, and click the option "run as administrator"

Answer contributed by delphifirst in this question

C) Changing the permissions on the python executable (Not recommended)

This is a possibility but I highly discourage you from doing so.

It just involves finding the python executable and setting it to run as administrator every time. Can and probably will cause problems with things like file creation (they will be admin only) or possibly modules that require NOT being an admin to run.

Make sure the file you are trying to write is closed first.

Change the permissions of the directory you want to save to so that all users have read and write permissions.

You can run CMD as Administrator and change the permission of the directory using cacls.exe. For example:

cacls.exe c: /t /e /g everyone:F # means everyone can totally control the C: disc

The problem could be in the path of the file you want to open. Try and print the path and see if it is fine I had a similar problem

def scrap(soup,filenm):
htm=(soup.prettify().replace("https://","")).replace("http://","")
if ".php" in filenm or ".aspx" in filenm or ".jsp" in filenm:
	filenm=filenm.split("?")[0]
	filenm=("{}.html").format(filenm)
	print("Converted a  file into html that was not compatible")

if ".aspx" in htm:
	htm=htm.replace(".aspx",".aspx.html")
	print("[process]...conversion fron aspx")
if ".jsp" in htm:
	htm=htm.replace(".jsp",".jsp.html")
	print("[process]..conversion from jsp")
if ".php" in htm:
	htm=htm.replace(".php",".php.html")
	print("[process]..conversion from php")

output=open("data/"+filenm,"w",encoding="utf-8")
output.write(htm)
output.close()
print("{} bits of data written".format(len(htm)))

but after adding this code:

nofilenametxt=filenm.split('/')
nofilenametxt=nofilenametxt[len(nofilenametxt)-1]
if (len(nofilenametxt)==0):
	filenm=("{}index.html").format(filenm)

It Worked perfectly

I had a similar problem. I thought it might be with the system. But, using shutil.copytree() from the shutil module solved the problem for me!

In my case the problem was that I hid the file (The file had hidden atribute):
How to deal with the problem in python:

Edit: highlight the unsafe methods, thank you d33tah

# Use the method nr 1, nr 2 is vulnerable

# 1
# and just to let you know there is also this way
# so you don't need to import os
import subprocess
subprocess.check_call(["attrib", "-H", _path])


# Below one is unsafe meaning that if you don't control the filePath variable
# there is a possibility to make it so that a malicious code would be executed

import os

# This is how to hide the file
os.system(f"attrib +h {filePath}")
file_ = open(filePath, "wb")
>>> PermissionError <<<


# and this is how to show it again making the file writable again:
os.system(f"attrib -h {filePath}")
file_ = open(filePath, "wb")
# This works

in my case. i just make the .idlerc directory hidden. so, all i had do is to that directory and make recent-files.lst unhidden after that, the problem was solved

I got this error as I was running a program to write to a file I had opened. After I closed the file and reran the program, the program ran without errors and worked as expected.

If you have open the file eg : .txt, .csv ; close the file first and then run the code

I faced a similar problem. I am using Anaconda on windows and I resolved it as follows:

1. search for "Anaconda prompt" from the start menu
2. Right click and select "Run as administrator"
3. The follow the installation steps...

This takes care of the permission issues

Here is how I encountered the error:

import os

path = input("Input file path: ")

name, ext = os.path.basename(path).rsplit('.', 1)
dire = os.path.dirname(path)

with open(f"{dire}\\{name} temp.{ext}", 'wb') as file:
    pass

It works great if the user inputs a file path with more than one element, like

C:\\Users\\Name\\Desktop\\Folder

But I thought that it would work with an input like

file.txt

as long as file.txt is in the same directory of the python file. But nope, it gave me that error, and I realized that the correct input should've been

.\\file.txt

As @gulzar said, I had the problem to write a file 'abc.txt' in my python script which was located in Z:\project\test.py:

with open('abc.txt', 'w') as file:
    file.write("TEST123")

Every time I ran a script in fact it wanted to create a file in my C drive instead Z! So I only specified full path with filename in:

with open('Z:\\project\\abc.txt', 'w') as file: ...

and it worked fine. I didn't have to add any permission nor change anything in windows.

That's a tricky one, because the error message lures you away from where the problem is.

When you see "__init__.py" of an imported module at the root of an permission error, you have a naming conflict. I bed a bottle of Rum, that there is "from tkinter import *" at the top of the file. Inside of TKinter, there is the name of a variable, a class or a function which is already in use anywhere else in the script.

Other symptoms would be:

1. The error is prompted immediately after the script is run.
2. The script might have worked well in previous Python versions.
3. User Mixon's long epos about administrator execution privileges has no impact at all. There would be no access errors to the files mentioned in the code from the console or other pieces of software.

Solution: Change the import line to "import tkinter" and add the namespace to tkinter methods in the code.

This error actually also comes when using keras.preprocessing.image so for example:

img = keras.preprocessing.image.load_img(folder_path, target_size=image_size)

will throw the permission error. Strangely enough though, the problem is solved if you first import the library: from keras.preprocessing import image and only then use it. Like so:

img = image.load_img(img_path, target_size=(180,180))