How to Solve Errno 13 Error in Python

Updated onbyAlan Morel
How to Solve Errno 13 Error in Python

When you try to access a file that you don't have permissions to access in Python, you will get an error.

This will happen because Python will try to open the file and will be denied by the operating system.

In this post, we'll learn how to fix this error by granting permission to the file.

Fixing permission errors

First, create a file called, example.txt and give it the following content:

BASH
hello world

This is how we would read that file in Python.

PYTHON
f = open("example.txt", "r") print(f.read())

If you don't have the right permissions, you'll see this:

BASH
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'example.txt'

As mentioned before, we get this error because Python is trying to open the file and is denied access.

Therefore, to solve this, you will have to properly grant yourself access to the file.

If you're on a Unix-based system, you can do this by running the following command:

BASH
chown user:user example.txt

You can also use this command:

BASH
chmod 775 example.txt

If you ran the command successful, you should have access to the file if you run the Python code as the same user.

PYTHON
f = open("example.txt", "r") print(f.read())
BASH
hello world

Conclusion

In this post, we learned how to avoid permission errors when working with files in Python.

The solution is to grant yourself access to the file using the chown or chmod command.

Once you have access to the file, you can run the Python code as the same user you granted access to.

Thanks for reading!

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