How to Fix Garbled Chinese Filenames When Unzipping with Python's zipfile

Introduction

Hello everyone, I am a Python enthusiast. Recently a member of the Python automation group asked how to unzip a file whose Chinese filenames appear as garbled characters.

Problem

The original code uses zipfile.ZipFile to extract files, but the extracted filenames are corrupted because the zipfile module decodes names using the CP437 code page.

import zipfile

def unzip_file(zip_file_path, output_folder_path):
    with zipfile.ZipFile(zip_file_path, 'r') as zip_ref:
        zip_ref.extractall(output_folder_path)

# usage example
zip_file_path = 'example.zip'
output_folder_path = 'output_folder'
unzip_file(zip_file_path, output_folder_path)

Solution

The teacher examined the zipfile source and confirmed it uses CP437 encoding. By re‑encoding the filenames from CP437 to GBK (or the appropriate charset) the problem is solved. The revised function extracts the archive and then walks the output directory, renaming any non‑ASCII filenames.

import zipfile
import os

def unzip_file(zip_file_path, output_folder_path, encoding='gbk'):
    with zipfile.ZipFile(zip_file_path, 'r') as zip_ref:
        zip_ref.extractall(output_folder_path)
    # Walk the extracted directory and fix filenames
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(output_folder_path):
        for bad_name in files:
            if not bad_name.isascii():
                true_name = bad_name.encode('cp437').decode(encoding)
                os.rename(os.path.join(root, bad_name), os.path.join(root, true_name))

# usage example
zip_file_path = 'example.zip'
output_folder_path = 'output_folder'
unzip_file(zip_file_path, output_folder_path)

The solution works without needing pathlib, using only the standard os module.

Discussion

Fans asked which library is best for unzipping. Answers mentioned the built‑in zipfile module, WinRAR command‑line calls, and that any graphical unzip tool can also be used; the code is convenient for batch processing multiple archives.

Conclusion

This article presented a specific Python automation problem, explained why Chinese filenames become garbled, and provided a complete, runnable solution that correctly handles the encoding.